Benedict Cumberbatch's transformative powers are such that he is not only among the busiest actors working today, but he has also attracted a very particularly, but increasingly numerous, rapturous legion of female fans—many of them seduced by his performances in Comic Con-friendly fare such as Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), the BBC series Sherlock, and Peter Jackson's Hobbit films, referring to themselves as "Cumberbitches." (@Cumberbitches' gleeful description on Twitter: "The most glorious and elusive society for the appreciation of the high cheek-boned, blue-eyed sex bomb that is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch.") Cumberbatch, though, undergoes perhaps his most radical metamorphosis yet (the emphasis on radical) to portray notoriously prickly information-liberation warrior and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Bill Condon's new film The Fifth Estate. Based on two books—Daniel Domscheit-Berg's Inside Wiki­Leaks: My Time With Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding—The Fifth Estate focuses on the early days of WikiLeaks, charting the formation and subsequent breakdown of Assange's relationship with one-time deputy Domscheit-Berg (played in the film by Daniel Brühl), who left the organization after clashing with Assange as pressure mounted following the release of the enormous cache of documents and files supplied to WikiLeaks by U.S. soldier Bradley Manning. (Manning was convicted on multiple counts, including violations of the Espionage Act, in July of this year and has changed his name to Chelsea in accordance with his decision to live as a woman.)

After reading an early draft of the script, Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 as he fights extradition to Sweden to face sexual-assault allegations, has called the film a "mass propaganda attack," and in September, just prior to the film's release, WikiLeaks released a memo calling it "irresponsible, counterproductive, and harmful." Assange even went so far as to write a letter in response to Cumberbatch's request to meet with him, in which he implored the actor to quit the project, saying, "I think I would enjoy meeting you ... I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film ... I believe that it is going to be overwhelmingly negative for me and the people I care about. It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organization."

For his part, Cumberbatch, who has never met Assange, found the mercurial Australian a "brilliant" and "remarkable" figure to inhabit—adjectives that Cumberbitches might very well use to describe his own impressively growing body of work. Of course, Cumberbatch's realm of expertise extends far beyond the nerd-genre universe: The son of actors Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, the 37-year-old Cumberbatch boasts an extensive résumé of award-winning film, theater, and television work, including more recent turns in Steven Spielberg's War Horse and Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (both 2011). He will have transfigured himself on screen at least three more times before year's end, appearing as a slave owner in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, based on Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir; as mousy "Little" Charles Aiken in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play August: Osage County; and as the Necromancer and the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Cumberbatch, who was in London, recently reconnected by phone with his Tinker, Tailor co-star Gary Oldman, who was on a fishing trip in western France.

GARY OLDMAN: Can you hear me, Cumby? I have a slight hiss on the line, but I'll battle through it.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: You sound distant.

OLDMAN: I'm in Saint-Martin-de-Ré on a fishing trip.

CUMBERBATCH: Oh, how lovely and amazing.

OLDMAN: I'm with my family and we're getting ready to do a bit of sea fishing.

CUMBERBATCH: Oh, I'm so jealous.

OLDMAN: Anyhow, I'll speak up.

CUMBERBATCH: Project!

OLDMAN: I will use my big voice. As my old teacher used to say, "Let's hear that nice, big, third-year voice." Well, good morning.

CUMBERBATCH: Good morning interviewer.

OLDMAN: Let me kick off with this one ... [noise] Hello? Hello?

CUMBERBATCH: Sorry, Gary. I missed that. We went through a tunnel. [both laugh]

OLDMAN: Can you hear me okay?

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, really well now. Can you hear me all right?

OLDMAN: Yeah. I had to walk down to a dock. I'm now on a boat.

CUMBERBATCH: [laughs] I love it.

OLDMAN: Anyhow, I wanted to kick off with a story about John Lennon that's related to a question that I had for you: There's a story about how Lennon once went to the cinema to see an Elvis Presley movie. Every time Elvis came on the screen, the girls in the audience would scream, so Lennon looked at Elvis up there and thought to himself, "That's a good job. I want to do that job." My question for you is this: Was there a transformative moment when you were either watching something or acting in an early play, and you said, "I test positive for the theater disease"? Was there a moment like that for you?

CUMBERBATCH: Well, there were a couple of clues or moments when the pieces of the jigsaw started falling into place. The first one I'm only slightly conscious of—it's more a collective memory of my parents because I was quite young—was when I went to visit my godmother, who was at Stratford at the time, and she let me stand on the stage. I just remember looking out into the darkness, and it pulled me in, rather than pushed me away, if you know what I mean. It gave me a real energy and thrill to think about communicating with that, rather than turning away and going home and having a cup of tea and leaving it to someone else. And as adults, they just looked at each other with raised eyebrows, all three of them actors, and went, "Oh dear." [laughs]

OLDMAN: "He's one of us."

CUMBERBATCH: "He's one of us—oh, shit." I had parents who were working actors, who did really well in their careers, but it was a living. So it was a reality for me growing up; it wasn't a fantasy. It wasn't sitting there going, "I want to be adored." It wasn't that at all. Not to say that the screams of fans aren't a smile-raiser, but that was never the pull for me. So that's another one off the list of comparisons between me and John Lennon. [laughs] And then I think another moment was further down the line. Basically, at school I had quite a chaotic energy; my focus was all over the place.

OLDMAN: You were probably creative. The French would say, "You were on the moon."

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, I'm on the moon. Exactly.

OLDMAN: Dreaming.

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, a bit of a dreamer. But my teachers would have probably called it something like ADD, or just a pain in the ass. But the more inspirational or far-sighted teachers gave me a focus, and that was parts in plays. I had to win them, though—it wasn't just because I was the son of Wanda and Tim. I could have been rubbish. It's not necessarily in the genes. But my teachers saw my energy and thought, Well, maybe if we give him a focus, he might run with the ball. And they were absolutely right. So now I get to be Elvis. It still makes me giggle that I'm paid to act, let alone doing the kind of work I'm doing at this level and having actual choices. I'm in this tiny percentage of our workforce that actually gets work, let alone the kind of work I'm getting.

OLDMAN: It's a ridiculously small percentage. When I first started, people would say that 98 percent of the profession are out of work at any one given time.

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah. I think with my parents' generation, it was still seen as a bit of a specialist skill. It was at the cornerstone of the birth of the working-class actors that came up through the Royal Court Theatre like yourself.

OLDMAN: Yeah. It was all about French doors.

CUMBERBATCH: And living-room dramas. I mean, it wasn't an open-and-shut job, there was still competition. But my dad himself would have said it was a lot easier.

OLDMAN: There was more work.

CUMBERBATCH: And there was more work and more of a bridge to how a career could begin, with rep and theater work, a little bit of telly, some film and radio. But the generation now below me were born into a world where if you're a kid with raw talent now, you can roll in and land a lead in a Scorsese film. You don't have to have prove yourself by working up the ranks, doing the classics, and getting the canon under your belt in the way the great Sirs and Dames of mom and dad's generation—the [Ben] Kingsleys and [Helen] Mirrens and [Anthony] Hopkinses and people of that ilk. It makes it sound like some dodgy ritual, but another main moment for me was when my dad gave me his blessing. I had just played Salieri in a university production of Amadeus, and he looked me in the eye and grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "You're better now than I ever was or will be. I think you'll have a wonderful life and career as an actor, and I can't wait to be a part of watching it." And I pretty much burst into tears. What a huge thing for a man to say to his son. I mean, not only an actor to an actor, but to give me that sort of, "I bless this ship and all who sail upon her" kind of a message ... How did your parents react to what you were interested in? Did they give you their blessing?

OLDMAN: Well, my dad wasn't around. When I decided that I might want to do acting for a living—I don't know where it really came from since there was no school play or any of that—my mom gave me her blessing. I had to get a scholarship—that was the only way I could have gone to drama school. But she didn't say, "That's ridiculous," or "You can't be serious. Don't do that." But I do remember watching Malcolm McDowell on TV one night, and it was like what alcoholics call a spiritual awakening, a moment of clarity. I went, "Oh, god, I want to do that."

CUMBERBATCH: I had many moments like that. I remember watching [Kenneth] Branagh's Hamlet at the Barbican or The Madness of King George at the National. I remember watching things of brilliance on TV with my parents, who would scour for the good stuff. We'd often sit around, maybe with one of their friends, like Donald Pickering, and talk about it, and we'd try to get him to shut up because he'd always be going, "Oh, darling, what's she doing?" [laughs] But it felt, to me, like an event, and it drew me out of where I was and into that world. I was also brought up in a very traditional, text-heavy, educational environment, where reading and the word and the script—"The play is the thing"—was my schooling, as well as my training. You know, I did classical theater training. It was only a year, but it reinforced what I always thought the whole deal was: theater first, then a bit of telly, and then possibly film—if you're lucky. And hopefully some radio work to use the pipes in that medium because I do love radio. But I always came at it from text.

OLDMAN: Well, when you talk about the great actors and the great giants of writing who wrote the texts of the canon, as it were, there is something to that idea of working one's way up from being an assistant stage manager to leading man and getting to move through those texts. You know, a student once asked Stella Adler if she thought that Marlon Brando was the greatest actor in the world, and her response was, "We will never know." [Cumberbatch laughs] She always saw the measure of great acting in the way you'd see a conductor conduct the great symphonies or a pianist play the great concertos or a dancer dance the great choreographies. It's easy, though, to get seduced by cinema.

CUMBERBATCH: I think what I loved in cinema—and what I mean by cinema is not just films, but proper, classical cinema—are the extraordinary moments that can occur on screen. At the same time, I do feel that cinema and theater feed each other. I feel like you can do close-up on stage and you can do something very bold and highly characterized—and, dare I say, theatrical—on camera. I think the cameras and the viewpoints shift depending on the intensity and integrity of your intention and focus on that.

OLDMAN: I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, "It was 1860 and it was winter ..."

CUMBERBATCH: And you take people with you. It's incredible, that direct feeling of communication. I have much more of a problem sitting in my own audience for a film—I always find that uncomfortable. I know most actors do, especially on first viewing. I think by the third time I saw Tinker, Tailor, it was wonderful, I could sit back and really enjoy the film and enjoy what I was part of and not get too upset about seeing myself on the screen. That's not mock humility, or me stumbling around and mumbling, "Oh, thank you," and looking at my feet. I'm very proud of the work I do, but I genuinely can't involve myself with an audience as early as somebody who's not part of the film can. So there's that side of theater that appeals to me, where you give something and the response to what you've created is a communion between you and the dark that contains however many people. It's thrilling not having a reflection other than through the people you're communicating with. But people ask, "What do you prefer?" and I don't have a preference. I love them both. I really do ... [Oldman is disconnected] Are you there? Have I lost you? How ironic. I've lost you and I'm talking into the darkness...

OLDMAN: [Oldman is reconnected] Talking into the void?

CUMBERBATCH: Literally. [laughs]

OLDMAN: The way we've connected this call, with you in England, me in France, and the call coming through America, the FBI—

CUMBERBATCH: It's based on the idea that the fourth estate is the traditional print media, but with the dawning of this epoch that we're entering into—and we're still trying to figure out—information can now be disseminated in a purer form. So the idea that people leak information is not just about whistle-blowers, it's also about how audiences that receive that information can then process it. It's raw data, it's unedited, and therefore, it's information that allows you to be the judge. It's not formatted for a paper that has a political bent or a need to sell or any tie-in with commerce. It has to do with freedom of information and an openness and transparency in the behavior of government, big business, and public bodies. The whistle-blowing aspect is a huge part of that, but it's also about questioning the rule of law and the power structures that rule our lives. And that's why it's called The Fifth Estate—it's the idea of an evolution in that process. Obviously, print media has been at the forefront of policing or questioning, but this new wave of technology has arrived.

OLDMAN: Which is why a film like this couldn't be more topical.

CUMBERBATCH: I think it will remain topical. People are saying, "Don't you feel you've slightly missed the boat now that there's been all these evolutions of the story, with Manning's trial and with [Edward] Snowden?" Not at all. The debate started and this is just proof that it is not a question that's going to go away. Individual human rights is a massive topic, and it's an incredibly complex and rich debate. And I hope the achievement of our film will be to empower people—like WikiLeaks intended to—to seek out their own truth with the information we've given in the film—or the version of information that we've given in the film. While based on accounts and real events, like any film, there are compressions and events that didn't involve certain characters that dramatically needed to be there in the film for the version of a three-year time period, from 2007 to 2010, that we're portraying. So it's really based on the relationship between Julian Assange and one of his critical volunteers, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and how that relationship goes awry and why. But it spans the burgeoning WikiLeaks that was not that well known about outside the hacker community—and even within that community it wasn't yet known as this triumphant tool that it was known as after 2010 for delivering the most shocking revelations of the "Collateral Murder" footage or the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, or the diplomatic cables.

OLDMAN: Did you meet Julian Assange?

CUMBERBATCH: No, we didn't meet. He didn't want to meet because he didn't want to condone the film, which I completely respect. In his predicament, he needs to be distanced from anything other than the truth his lawyers are seeking to harness around him—his version of events. He felt that the two accounts that the film were based on were poisonous and detrimental to his cause and the people involved in his cause, which was a hard thing to hear. It made me question what we were doing and why we were doing it, but I think we are justified, because, as I communicated to him, I think he'll be surprised with how sympathetic the portrayal of him and Wiki­Leaks is. This is not a film that's supposed to polarize people into galvanizing a one-sided argument; this is about opening up the debate, and there's great sophistication on either side of the fence—the fence, in this film, being the U.S. State Department. But I'd love to meet the guy. I have a great deal of admiration for him, and I've made no secret of saying that before. I'm an actor playing him in a film, so of course I have empathy for his state of mind and beliefs. But I did my work remotely. I worked as if from a photograph rather than a life class. There's an awful lot of material and footage about Julian. If you think there are a lot of websites about me, you should see how much footage there is about Julian and of Julian.

OLDMAN: Was he an interesting character to inhabit?

CUMBERBATCH: Oh, my god, yes. I think the challenge was to give something of him that no one has seen—which is probably, for him, going to be the hardest thing to watch. It's me trying to reveal what isn't in any of those interviews or his public persona. Whether I got that or not, I don't know. He's bound to have issue with it. But it's a very rich tapestry, and at the center is this really enigmatic character. So to try and pin that down and inhabit someone who's very far from me physically, emotionally, intellectually, culturally ... He was brought up in Australia by a single parent and escaped a cult and has this brilliant, rebellious intellect that took him through the hacking world to become this frontman for the most extraordinarily revolutionary idea in media—this whistle-blowing website where data can be dumped anonymously and then disseminated by the public, free, and with no interference from any other intermediary. He's quite a remarkable human being to try to pull off—to get the motivations and the instincts and emotional kind of undertones right. Most people only know him as the man who's in his current predicament, the kind of tabloid version of him—the white-haired weirdo locked up in an embassy, wanted for rape. And actually there's really something to celebrate about him and to explore about him, which is a lot richer than those broad brushstrokes. Bill Condon and I met, and he's also just a brilliant man. In this film, he has made this near impossible, intellectual jigsaw puzzle. And I think it's going to be a provoking and politically resonant, pertinent piece of work.

OLDMAN: It is a story that will continue to have legs. This is not going to go away very quickly.

CUMBERBATCH: No, not at all. I think the American public, now that they know about these debates—because of Snowden in particular as well as Manning—are now going, "Hang on a minute, why do you need to know everything I'm saying to Aunt Deidre in Wisconsin when we're talking about whether she got the curtain tapestry right? If our right to privacy is being taken away from us, then haven't the terrorists won?" It's a very complex argument. Of course, we want to get the bad guys, and I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own—they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes. So it's not about politics. It's fascinating to see that the Obama administration is responding to it, and it'll be interesting to see what England does. Personally, if they are listening to this conversation, then the principle is upsetting. It's what they could do with the information they glean from a harmless conversation that isn't about what they're listening in for—I think that's really the rub. But they have closed down terror networks and it's increasingly difficult for them because of mobile communication. It makes you think that their job is impossible. And if they've saved innocent civilian lives through monitoring our phone calls, then am I really that upset that someone knows I talked to you about acting and process or ordered a sandwich or been belligerent about something to someone? If we're talking about people listening to us to check that we're not planning a terrorist attack, then so be it. I'm not condoning it, but I can see the justifications. It's very complex.

OLDMAN: I don't even know what I feel about Snowden, in a way. Part of me feels that if you're going to whistle-blow, then do it, but stand your ground. Face the consequences. Don't run.

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, but at the same time, he's got a lot more information. That's what I get a feeling of. It's not just what he's leaked so far—he's got a lot more. So it's what they could do to him. They could just lock him away and throw away the key. But we need to engage with this. It's a reality of our lives—we need to know. Anyway, it's so easy to get mired in this, and I'm not a soldier and I'm not a politician, and I'm not a spy—I'm an actor.

OLDMAN: Can you imagine people spying in on us now? A couple of lovies ...

CUMBERBATCH: Gaffing away, talking about process and our jobs.

OLDMAN: No threat here.

CUMBERBATCH: I think we'd make great spies because of that, rather than [Guy] Burgess bumming around going, "I'm a spy," and no one believing him. We'd be such obviously bad choices that it would kind of be a great double bluff.

OLDMAN: So, are you planning to return to the theater? [both laugh]

CUMBERBATCH: Well, right now I'm also prepping The Imitation Game, which is the film I'm doing about Alan Turing. But I'm planning to do something theater-wise next year, but I don't know when, so I have to be a bit cagey about it.

OLDMAN: So you'll be secretive about it.

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, but it's in the works at the moment.

OLDMAN: Well, as I see land receding and the ocean beckoning ...

CUMBERBATCH: The call of the marlins.

OLDMAN: Let me as you one final question: So Benedict Cumberbatch, your films are on fire and you have to run in a save one scene ...

CUMBERBATCH: Oh, god. A scene? Fucking hell.

OLDMAN: A scene.

CUMBERBATCH: Just my films? Or in a film in particular?

OLDMAN: Your work. What of your work would you grab from the fire?

CUMBERBATCH: Christ. That's difficult. It's a brilliant question, but I don't know ... One postcard moment for me, because there was such a resonance beneath it—and, Gary Oldman, this involves you—just at the end of Tinker, Tailor, where we pass each other in the office ... I shouldn't say the office; it's not called the office ...

OLDMAN: In the Circus.

CUMBERBATCH: In the Circus. We pass each other and there's a knowing look. And just after I pass you, I smile, knowing what that means, knowing what we went through to achieve that, knowing what might be for both of us. Yeah, that moment means a lot to me. I suppose that's definitely one of them. And there are others, but for very different reasons. Bits where I go, "Yeah, that's okay. I can definitely live by that." There are one or two deduction moments in Sherlock. There are moments, like, on the edge of the roof, as well, with John [Watson, played by Martin Freeman]. There is one whole scene in Parade's End—because I love that character so, so dearly—that I would like to keep. It's a moment in the second episode, I think, when I'm talking to Valentine, the woman I love and have a profound connection with, but I have to deny my feelings for her because of my sense of honor to my wife, my ever self-destructing, saboteuring wife. And it's a scene where I tell her I'm going to war. It's all a mess, but the scene is about what I am, who I am, what I stand for, what my country is. I will be very happy if they play that in my, sort of, "Here was an actor and here is something he did." I'd be very happy about that moment being shown. Well, I'll let you get back to your "We're gonna need a bigger boat" moment.

Benedict Cumberbatch is currently one of the hottest actors in the world, having already worked with Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams as well as Sir Peter Jackson.Television audiences know Cumberbatch for his title role in BBC show Sherlock Holmes, while he also stars in Steve McQueen's acclaimed film 12 Years a Slave, was seen earlier this year as the villain in Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, played Julian Assange in Wikileaks film The Fifth Estate and has starred in Spielberg's War Horse and Thomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.In The Hobbit trilogy, Cumberbatch plays the role of Smaug the dragon.In The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in The Hobbit trilogy, fans of epic fantasy finally get to see one of the genre's most famous dragons in all his glory. The film climaxes with his facing off against Bilbo Baggins, played by Sherlock co-star Martin Freeman.Kate Rodger is in Los Angeles for the premiere of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and interviewed the cast and crew.

Is it true you did some of the voice recording on a motion-capture stage?

I did, yes, that's how it started. They recorded facial capture, then before that we did a lot of stuff on the mo-cap stage. That was very important to me. I actually said to Peter very early on, "Of course I want this gig, of course I want to do this. It would be a great thrill to work with you on this extraordinary character. But I don't just want it to be a disembodied voice. I want it to do something to physicalise it and I think we should do some motion-capture if you've got time". He said "Yeah, sure". I'd never done it before, so I thought, great!

So you got to put little dots all over your face?

Yeah, and you fell like a complete tit! You walk onto the stage and that's just bread and butter to them. They just say "Good morning Benedict, if you can just stand here, tat'd be fantastic. Peter is going to come down in a minute with a juice and then we can get started. Is there anything you'd like? Would you like a coffee? We've got a chair over there." And the chair says "Smaug the Dragon" on it. And I'm just saying "Yeah, I'm alright. But has anybody noticed that I'm standing here in grey lycra and I have reflective shit all over me?" And they just say "No, no we do this all the time." Then they told me I had to do my movements and I thought they meant stretching, but they meant articulation movements which start to programme in what you're going to do during the day, so that the cameras recognise you. And it is just thrilling! You're free. You're in a boring carpeted room and you have to imagine being a dragon in a lair on a mound of gold speaking to a hobbit the size of your little finger nail. You're just back in the realms of playing in your bedroom as a child. It's really, really invigorating and empowering.

And Smaug was a big part of your childhood, wasn't he?

He was. My dad read me the books when I was six or seven, I can't remember exactly when but it was before I went to boarding school when I was eight. It was a bedtime treat at home. I knew I'd been good if I got two chapters and a look at the illustrations as well, it was kind of a caveat to get me into bed and making me behave. And it f**king worked, I tell you! It also sparked off my love of literature. My dad was so good, he characterised all of folk in the story. Smaug stuck in my head in the way that it does for most children I think. Dragons really are extraordinarily powerful, beautiful, mythical, majestic creatures. I mean Smaug is corrupt, wrong, dangerous and has a kind of rotten nature, but he's still magnificent. He is stupendous and everything Bilbo says he is. But within the story, within the narrative, within the characters, you're so full of anticipation for this character, he is sort of at the centre of the story.

No pressure then?

No, no pressure at all, haha. But thank God I had the man himself, Peter Jackson, there on hand as well as the seed my dad had sew. I felt very well looked after by Peter. We got on very well together I mean you know what he's like as a human being, he's so lovely and easy and authoritative. You feel the Tolkien fans are going to be looked after by him, Phillipa and Fran. Between the three of them, they're very respectful to the canon, and they have to be, quite rightly, they should be. We were never going to stray too far from the dragon in the books. It was important to trust that.

You've worked with Martin Freeman on Sherlock before working together on The Hobbit.

Yes, and yet we never, ever met, we never acted opposite each other. We've worked a lot in a very hot, sweaty boxing factory somewhere in Wales. To be in that hot little studio, very close to each other, and then to be this huge, massive, skyscraper size serpent acting with Martin on a screen. I mean we never crossed over for this, so it was very strange. The thing I was most worried about was what the dynamic would be like in the scene, but it works really, really well.

New Year's Day sees the hugely welcome return of Sherlock back on BBC ONE after nearly two years away. The first episode will see Sherlock re-appear in Watson's life following his apparent death at the end of Series 2. I spoke to stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman about returning to their now iconic roles and the huge public interest in how Sherlock faked his death.

Is it good to be alive?

Benedict Cumberbatch: Of course, it's great to be alive.

Were you able to guess how Sherlock faked his death?

Benedict Cumberbatch: I'm playing the guy, but I'm not the guy. You won't be disappointed. It's ingenious, witty, generous and everything that it should be.

Were you endlessly badgered by fans wanting to know the secret?

Martin Freeman: Yes! But it was nice because I didn't know. I know now that I've read the first episode but up until then we didn't know. It was nice because it meant I didn't have to lie or remember which lie I'd told.

Where is John when we first meet him in the new series?

Martin Freeman: Well it's two years on. He's had a lot of grief in his life after losing his best friend but he's trying to move on and live a happy-ish life again.

Did you find it easy becoming Sherlock again after time away?

Benedict Cumberbatch: It felt comfortable. It's never easy because we're trying to better ourselves, we're being spoilt rotten by fantastic scripts. It's thrilling to be back.

What can you tell us about the scene where Sherlock and John reunite?

Benedict Cumberbatch: Not a lot. It was hellishly fun to film. It's beautifully written.

Martin Freeman: It's really strong and I hope it'll really work. You're conscious not to overplay the enormity of the scene because you can never guess or anticipate accurately how people are going to perceive anything.

Have you enjoyed coming back together?

Martin Freeman: It's been great. We haven't seen each other properly for a couple of years so it's lovely. We're both very intent on not cruising and you genuinely have to rediscover who you're playing and remember who these two are.

What's your relationship like with Sherlock Holmes? Jeremy Brett famously said he'd cross the road to avoid him. How do you feel about him?

Benedict Cumberbatch: I think there's a lot more humanity to him than people initially presume. Whilst he can be incredibly rude and wishy washy, but he wears his heart on his sleeve. I'd be fascinated to meet him. To view the world the way he says he sees it would be a delight, if he gave me the time of day.

With your movie careers taking off was there ever any question you'd come back for the new series?

Martin Freeman: I think you'd have dig around a long time to find something that's better than this and more satisfying to do.

Martin, your other half Amanda is in the series this year,what was it like working with her?

Martin Freeman: I think it's pretty evident that the best television is as good as anything. As far as American shows go I can't think of many films that are better written than The Wire or The Sopranos.

Benedict Cumberbatch: There's a huge wealth of talent pouring into television at the moment and that can only be a good thing. It's so accessible nowadays.

In April, we were lucky enough to enjoy a round-table chat with the cast and creators of Sherlock, starting its third series on BBC One on Wednesday the 1st of January. First up is Benedict Cumberbatch, at that time the star of billboard ads around the world for Star Trek Into Darkness, fresh from playing Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate, and limbering up to step back into his role as TV's most brilliant detective...

Did you manage to get through the hordes outside the hotel?

They’d gone by the time I got here. I ducked it a little bit and ran in. I was cutting it a bit fine this morning.

You’ve had to get used to that wherever you go now, presumably?

Yeah, it’s something you have to get used to. It’s one of those things that’s, what’s the word… it’s an adjustment. It is an adjustment. Loads of people have said it, to a boring extent, but there’s just no… they don’t teach you how to deal with any of that.

Is it ever difficult for you?

Abnormal or strange, yeah. Difficult? Not yet, no. It’s not difficult-difficult. There are days when you feel a bit self-conscious and you’d prefer to be just a little more anonymous, but it comes with a lot of good stuff as well so you can’t really complain about the bad, and especially not to journalists!

Is there a sense that Sherlock’s fandom might love the show a bit too much? Like, they’re Lennie squeezing that puppy in Of Mice And Men?

What a great analogy. Wow. I never would have thought about it as something as dramatic as that. I had a friend who once squeezed her rabbit too much - that’s not a euphemism - [laughter] until it started to squeal, she thought it was saying (in the voice of a rabbit, somehow) ‘I love you’, but it was really saying ‘You’re crushing my ribs and I’m dying’ [laughter].

I would never want to accuse the fans of being anything other than intelligent, thoroughly full-throttle enthusiastic and into it, but what I love about our show is that we have a really broad audience and there were lots of people who weren’t outside the hotel today who will be equally excited to see it, who will just wait for it as a quality bit of television, which is what we like to view it as.

A problem is of course, that Sherlock uses social media, so it gives a platform for this kind of fan-fiction, the slash fiction, which is really creative but it’s not what we’re doing and we’re not doing it for that, so there are some insistences about John and I’s relationship [makes a face, everyone laughs], it’s sort of 'come on, just drop it now' you know. But it’s part of the love that people have for the show and even people who are fanatical about it do it for the right reasons.

How easy was it to get back into character for series three?

Easier than the second season, the second season was a little harder I think partly because I’d just been rolling around and losing my voice naked at the Olivier for too long [the theatre where Cumberbatch played, alternately, the creature and Frankenstein alongside Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle’s production]. It feels comfortable, and I mean that in the best sense. It’s still a challenge, it’s still hard work – as it should be because we’re trying to better ourselves of course, but there’s enough familiarity, the writers have just given us such a treat to play, and when we hit the sweet spots in the scene, when I’m doing, and everyone’s doing their best, it’s such a wonderful thing to be part of.

There’s a two-year time gap between the last episode of Sherlock series two and the first episode of series three.

There is, and it’s nice to be able to play that.

Do we see what Sherlock’s been up to on his own?

You might do. You might do. There are going to be a lot of answers like that!

Did you know what happened at the end of the last series?

I was as curious as the nation was to figure it out. I mean, I had my own idea and it wasn’t far off, but of course I wanted to know, so yes, I knew.

Do you now fully understand how Sherlock survived the fall?

Yeah, that’s what I was saying. I wanted to understand that.

Because the last time we spoke to Martin he said he still didn’t understand fully.

Oh yeah, it’s complicated I guess. It was explained to me at least, I think, quite clearly but then I took a special interest since I was the one jumping off it, doing my stunts off the roof, which was quite fun.

Did you know the solution when you got the episode script for The Reichenbach Fall?

Yes. I knew roughly at the time that we were doing it. I think probably like Martin, there were probably details I forgot, two years of water under the bridge and a few more characters to play and get under so you know, it was as surprising and delightful as it will be for the audience when I read it in the script.

Is there anything you think your incarnation of Sherlock definitely wouldn’t do? Looking back over some of the past on-screen versions, you have Basil Rathbone doing a song and dance routine in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, for instance, is that something you can see yourself doing ever in the role?

I think that’s one genre I haven’t covered yet, so yeah, a tap dance routine would be lovely, would be a delight. I mean, he’s a mean fiddler so maybe he knows how to use his pipes as well, why not?

What I love about him is that he has almost a superhuman calibre, there’s this endless treasure trove of unused talents and it gets sometimes a little bit ridiculous in the books but I think we can play with that and he doesn’t necessarily have to be good at all of them, which could add some value to it, but if the occasion fits, I don’t see why not.

What is he not good at, your Sherlock?

Well, at any particular time, there’s a huge span of knowledge which he cannot compute because it forces other stuff out of the hard-drive. It’s very famous that list in, I think, is it The Sign of Four… [prompted: A Study in Scarlet] Yes, A Study in Scarlet, where basically he lists what he isn’t capable of, but then he kind of disproves himself within even the course of that story like we did in our story with astronomy, you know, “the earth goes run around the sun, what need have I of that pish posh” and then he remembers the Van Buren supernova and the detail in the painting which means it’s a fake so he saves that child’s life.

It’s tricky with him, it’s all about intent and focus and when he fixes his beam on something, he’s pretty devastatingly good at it because of how he can concentrate and eschew peripheral detail that’s not important, or just any kind of other distraction, including sex.

Speaking of which… [more laughter] We hear Irene Adler’s unlikely to return for series three, but she’s a big fan favourite, people love that relationship and so I wondered if there were likely to be any points at which we’ll see Sherlock missing her - I don’t know if he’s capable of that - or referring to her.

There’s a drawer in Baker Street, with her phone in it, the Vertu phone, it’s there isn’t it? I mean, he has a token, he’s kept something of hers. But if you look at the way I play that after the moment of fond reminiscing of one night in Islamabad or whatever may or may not have happened after I rescued her from death, I stop smiling and put it away and it’s in a drawer, it’s gone from my immediate environment, it’s something that’s compartmentalised.

So that two years wasn’t spent in a wild fling…

I don’t think we were off having a holiday, no.

Why do you think the show has struck such a chord with people?

As I said in the first series, I think it’s because it really pays homage to the original. The original stories are so rich and generous and they have a beautiful humanity about them, the sweep and range of characters and life and texture of London.

I think London’s a huge part of why people love it and I think the relationship as well at the core of it, you have these two people that need each other and while in the books it’s far more clearly defined as hero worship, in our version hopefully, there’s far more engagement and pragmatism and there’s a more apparent need for Watson than there is just to witness and report as there often is in the books ‘How do you do that? I hadn’t seen that, My God’ and so on. Our Watson graduates, he gets smarter with his friend. But that relationship’s absolutely key.

The fact that we’ve got three of the most talented writers in the country who are huge, huge fanboys, so they’re writing from a position of real reverence but at the same time, in the same way that Conan Doyle was, they’re being cheeky with the formula, and they’re writing for Conan Doyle and Sherlock and Watson, they’re not writing for other motivations I think. You know, there are three episodes, so we can pack quite a punch. We still turn over quite fast because it’s an hour and a half’s telly, not an hour, it’s not like we’re lounging about with cigars whilst people swing a lens, we really get a pace on during the working day, there’s a lot to do. I think we maintain our quality because it’s boutique, as opposed to, you know…

You mentioned London being key, would you like to film Sherlock outside of the UK? With The Hounds of Baskerville episode you got out of the capital…

Yeah, that was fun. I mean, logistically it’s a nightmare. That’s one of the reasons Cardiff is such a joy because it’s easier to control, you can do a lot of like for like and transporting everyone and having everyone in the same place, it’s just easy. London is a bit of a pickle to film in as anyone knows, but it’s wonderful when we have the moments when we do bring it home, like this afternoon. It’s great, it’s great. But there’s no reason you can’t get on a plane and travel as far as I’m concerned.

Is there anywhere particular you’d like to see Sherlock and Watson elsewhere in the world?

Lots of places, yeah.

New York perhaps?

There are a lot of destinations. I don’t think we’re limited by that. Nowhere’s ruled out really, there’s no reason it couldn’t travel.

Have you taken any interest in Elementary?

Very much, well as far as I’ve been around to watch it and record it. Yeah, I think what Jonny’s [Lee Miller] done is remarkable, because he’s created an entirely different vein to what we’re plumbing and using and he’s really, really brilliant at it. To think of the volume of work he has to do, it’s a remarkable performance, as is Lucy Liu’s, I think she’s terrific and it’s nice to see him in New York. I like the qualities that they’ve played with in him, he’s sort of nearer a sort of Houdini version I think than.., well no, actually no, maybe a Bell version, the voice is slightly lighter and not so deep but, I like it, I like it, I think it’s different enough from ours to have an audience that can love it as well as ours.

You touched on the John/Sherlock relationship which is obviously a big thing, but another relationship fans are looking to see more from is Mycroft/Sherlock. Are we going to get any more glimpses of that?

Interesting. Is that true?

Oh yeah. Well, not in the way that they’re interested in John and Sherlock…

Not in that way! Incestuous brothers…

Not in the underpants way…

The underpants way, I love it! Oh that’s great, like censoring a classroom of twelve year olds! [Laughter].

The Holmes brothers' childhood must be fascinating though.

Yeah it is, it is, it’s really fascinating.

Do you know how they grew up?

It’s interesting, in the first series I said to Steven [Moffat, co-creator], ‘So what’s his back story?’ and he went ‘You don’t want back story’. He didn’t like to really do it because a lot of what we try and do in art is to sort of deepen the mystery rather than expose cod reasoning or post-Freudian parameters to define, that is why someone is like that because they were damaged by someone breaking their pencil in front of their face in the school room.

I think as an actor you have to have a framework to hang certain things on, so I had a discussion very early on with Steven and Mark [Gatiss, co-creator] about what they thought, because I was intrigued, because I’m a young Sherlock and because we’re starting his story, I wanted to know. It’s very easy to bandy terms like autism, sociopath, psychopath incorrectly, and OCD and all sorts of qualities of modern psychology or tropes or psychological behaviours or disorders and just go ‘That’s who he is’, and I think it kind of limits it.

But at the same time there’s a joyous fount of characterisation to explore there and yeah, definitely there’ll be some stuff revealed. You’ll find out more about their relationship definitely, as brothers. Somebody said something which I really liked, they said it to Mark and it was intriguing, he said ‘Does Sherlock worry about Mycroft?’ which I think is a wonderful idea, because they are very… they play cold with each other to maintain superiority but well, you’ll see.

How does the relationship between John and Sherlock develop over this series? Are there great progressions in it?

Yeah. There are lots of new elements in play and the dynamic shifts, which is really exciting and obviously, there’s a bit of explanation. It’s not like the stories where Watson kind of goes ‘Oh good! What’s the next case?’ [on Holmes’ return] it’s a little bit more questioning.

He’s presumably livid or very upset when Sherlock returns, not that you can spoil that reaction?

You’ll see, you’ll see. That’s been great fun to explore. Martin’s such a phenomenal talent that to work opposite that and be triggering that has been great, great fun, really good fun.

Does Sherlock allow himself to express any regrets when he finally comes face to face with John again?

Oh, you’ll have to wait and see. You’ll have to wait and see. You’re asking me to describe colourings of characters and scenes and moments and stuff and I know it’s frustrating, this game of Grandmother’s Footsteps or whatever it is, but you won’t be disappointed. It’s a beautiful dynamic, it’s good fun.

There’s no Moriarty presumably?

Who knows? Who knows? I know. [Laughter].

How do you top the super villain?

I don’t know. I mean, Andrew’s performance was just extraordinary. I knew him as a theatre actor and a friend before he was cast and I didn’t suggest anything, but when I heard I was like, ‘Brilliant’. Because I knew he’d just run with it, he was amazing. I did watch The Reichenbach Fall again before we started shooting and I was just going ‘Fucking hell’, all that stuff set to Rossini at the beginning, was just effortless, beautiful performance and rightfully deserving of an award. He’s a dear friend, so yeah, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be hard, for the writers as well as whoever steps into the antagonist role.

Who’s the most intense character to play? Sherlock or Star Trek Into Darkness’ John Harrison? Or indeed, Julian Assange?

Well they all come with their own complications, and utterly different challenges which is why I love my day job. It’s a really hard question. It’s like theatre, film, radio, or television, it’s really hard to distinguish, the characters are so different, so different. To start to describe them would be to wander into those territories again and a treasure trove of closely guarded secrets about reveals and so on. Just on scale, one’s [The Fifth Estate] an incredible, extraordinary story of our time involving real people and the morality of being a storyteller, and with that in mind is pretty heady stuff. It’ll be, I hope, a fantastic film and exploration of that relationship within that organisation and the achievements of that organisation and Julian [Assange] in particular and how they fell out and why they fell out and that whole three year span.

Harrison [Star Trek Into Darkness] is in another time in the future and it was fantasy but also live action. It was a huge film as opposed to a prestige project that’s based on political reality. It was great fun to play with all of those toys and to have JJ [Abrams] at the helm saying ‘Have a go at that, have a go at this’ and you know, being dragged across the floor at Playa Vista Studio at something like fifty to sixty kilometres an hour at one point at about one in the morning. That was fun, that was a lot of fun. There’s a lot of live action stuff, and you know, learning your choreography for action sequences, beefing up, I went up four suit sizes in the space of a month, ate four thousand calories for about three weeks which I wouldn’t advise anybody to do unless they’re really hungry. It was an exploration of changing shape and it was a different form of what I do and I loved it. I’d never done it before. They were just a great bunch of peers to be working with, another really strong family of people who they just hooked me in and I went along with the ride, it was fantastic. Three utterly different projects.

Having seen the latest poster for Star Trek Into Darkness, in your contracts, do you now stipulate a fantastic coat must be worn at all points?

[Laughing]. I was a bit worried about the length of that one, but [costume designer] Michael Kaplan… I love that man. I made my first boo-boo on set in Star Trek. I’d just got off the plane – this is all a defence for what I did, because it’s kind of unforgiveable – I’d just got off the plane, it was all a very fast casting as probably you guys know from any blurb about it out there.

Anyway so, there I was, on the lot at Sony, I’d just met JJ [Abrams, Star Trek director] in the flesh for the first time, and all of the heads of department. I was walking across with Michael Kaplan, extraordinary costume designer that he is, walking back to wardrobe which is this huge sound stage entirely devoted to costume, it was massive and full of the most amazing, amazing stuff that you will ever see.

But anyway, we’re talking and I’m trying to keep my jetlag brain awake and engage him and find out who he was and - I should have just IMDb’d him I guess but anyway. I’m slightly embarrassed about this so I’m just procrastinating - so I said, “You worked with JJ before on the first Star Trek film didn’t you?”, and he went - Michael’s so laid back he’s horizontal - [Cumberbatch slides into an impersonation of a gently spoken, mellow American, leaning back and stroking his hair] he looks like sort of Willem Defoe, he’s a very handsome man, always tanned, beautiful hair, very cool, lovely calm guy, “I love Sherlock” he and his sister are big fans… So we talked about that and I said, “So before that, had you done any sci-fi before?” and he went [still in the calm, relaxed Kaplan voice] “Umm, yeah”. So I said, “Really, what had you done before that?”

From 'Star Trek' to 'Hobbit,' 2013 was full of highlights for the British fan-favorite actor.

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2013 was the Year of the Snake. But in Hollywood, it was the Year of the Cumberbatch.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch raised his status from cult star of TV's Sherlock to a favorite for a massive amount of new Cumberbabes and Cumberbros in a string of big-screen fare, especially as bad guys.

He proved a worthy foe for Chris Pine's Captain Kirk as the new Khan in the J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek Into Darkness and makes things doubly difficult for the heroes of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (in theaters Friday) as the evil Necromancer and the antagonistic talking dragon Smaug.

Cumberbatch's presence also graced The Fifth Estate (in which he starred as real-life WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange), the Oscar-buzzworthy 12 Years a Slave and the upcoming August: Osage County (opening Christmas day), but in those he worked with his fellow actors. For The Hobbit, he mainly spent time with director Peter Jackson doing motion-capture and voiceover work for his baddies and didn't hang out with many of his cast members until this past week at the Los Angeles premiere.

"I've never even met Cate Blanchett and apparently I've got a scene with her coming up, so there you go," Cumberbatch says with a laugh. (He and Blanchett will be in the final film The Hobbit: There and Back Again in 2014, which also brings a new three-episode season of Sherlock and Cumberbatch as World War II code-cracker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.)

Cumberbatch talks with USA TODAY about his Hobbit roles, his 2013 highlights and who's he taking to the movies on his Christmas break.Q. How much motion-capture did you do for 'Smaug'?

A. The most bits I recognize are when it's square on, where it's face to face with Bilbo (played by Martin Freeman) or Thorin (Richard Armitage) in the Hall of Kings at the end. That's where I can definitely see my gestures.

There's a temperature and pace to some of the movement of the dragon before he obviously flies and does the fantastical things he can do that no human can. Those guys at (digital-effects company) WETA are extraordinary, but they were really receptive to the idea of me characterizing him first in the flesh and moving around the mo-cap studio — "the Volume" as they call it — and give an anthropomorphic quality to this reptile who can breathe fire and fly.

It was also important for me to physicalize where the voice was coming from and not just be a bodiless voice. It fed into the stuff we then did on the soundstage.

There were certain characteristics, eye movements and facial expressions layered underneath this extraordinary creation that came from me.

Q. That must have been a challenge.

A. It's a completely different way of acting. I completely loved it. It gave me total and complete freedom. There wasn't a mark to hit, there wasn't a costume or makeup issues to keep in continuity, there wasn't all the amazing amount of hours that the dwarves and everybody else in that production puts in.

There's no way I can be a serpent of that size who breathes fire and flies. Even if it was profitable for me to interpret that somehow, I'm a biped. It was up to me to completely imagine being a dragon. It's child's play. It's the most enjoyable fantastic and freeing kind of moment of reinventing what it is to be an actor on camera.

I was really enthralled for that process. And it's a lot easier than having to spend hours acting opposite a ping-pong ball in front of a green screen. You are the effect — everything you do is being manipulated into the effect.

Q. What was the biggest difference between playing the Necromancer and Smaug?

A. The Necromancer was much more ethereal and disembodied — he's this sort of formless spirit that's not found a real physical realization yet. He's getting there, he's becoming the all-seeing eye as we know from Lord of the Rings and that's really exciting. He's Sauron. It's a slow evolution for him, so that quality was brought about by movement I did as myself just as a human form and not trying to ape any reptilian behavior. I was walking toward the cameras in the Volume but with a bungee — I had this sensation of being pulled back.

Peter's great note about the Necromancer was that he should be like a black hole, with energy sucked in and toward him while Smaug is much more confrontational and a huge animal. That was much more forward and investigative and there are articulations at the neck and the head and the shoulders. I would clamp my elbows into my body and push myself around like a worm with my feet bound together on the mo-cap stage, as to not use them as feet but just as a thing I was lugging behind.

They are very, very different energies and they both fed into the voice. Smaug had to really be rich and deep and come from the same bowels that create all that fire.

Also, I wanted it to be worn — not necessarily old but I wanted there to be an element of it that sounded like hot air being blown over flaming coals rather than a crisp, clean, delicate or fresh voice.

I shredded my vocal cords to bits trying to do very weird things. Some guys came and they said, "You've already added effects to this, right?" And they went, "No, no, that's just him on his own in front of a microphone." They went, "Wow." That was great. I was pleased to impress that crowd.

It was such a thrill to please both J.J. and Peter Jackson in the same half of a year. I worked hard to give them what they needed and tried to surprise them as well.

Q. Smaug's definitely got a personality, too. He doesn't just haul off and fry Bilbo to a crisp — they have a proper conversation.

A. He's smart. He doesn't want to just kill the mouse — he wants to know who set the mouse into the lair. He's got an intelligence and a charm about him that soon degenerates into a venal, terrible vanity and dead-end rage. He's a psychopath, he can empathize as long as it gets him what it needs. He's an utterly self-serving and greedy destructive force, but his failings all have a human character. It wouldn't work as a creation at all if it was just, oh, there's a beast in a lair.

What's beautiful about the book is he has a personality and if anything his personality is a metaphor for capitalism gone wrong and that stretches across the age, no more so in the last couple of decades in our lifetime.

The thing I learned from him is know your limitations. He's someone who thinks he's invincible because of how locked into his own majesty he is, and he's not at all. He's very vulnerable.

All of that is in the original Tolkien text completely, and my dad read this book to me when I was a kid so that was the first seed of it. He did a great Smaug but I really remember his Smeagol, his Gollum, to be honest. That was a character he used to bring out every now and again to amuse me. He was really good at it — he'd give Andy a run for his money.

I told Dad the first time I knew I got this job for sure. I rang him and said, "You'll never guess what I'm doing." He went, "Oh, that's fantastic. Why aren't they seeing me?"

Q. Has your dad seen The Hobbit yet?

A. No, he's waiting in line like everyone else. We'll probably go and see it together as a family when I get back to London.

Q. Has dealing with, say, paparazzi while filming Sherlock or having your Star Trek character overanalyzed on the Internet changed the way you look at your career?

A. To be honest, I'm so happy to be given an opportunity to play these parts. The reflections that happen in retrospect on me playing them, I try not to get involved because it's kind of scary.

I always just primarily worry about pleasing the director and the person in front of me and the rest of my cast. Whether it's a radio studio or a rehearsal amongst the team with biscuits and scripts in hand, it doesn't matter what scale it's at — it's about being true to your intent to being truthful in the moments.

I've worked with some of the greats. I'm just very, very grateful. (Pauses) I'm sure it makes boring copy — hey, here's another actor telling you how grateful he is! But look at the work I've been doing the last year. How can I not be grateful?

Q. You mentioned child's play before. Does a lot of acting for you come down to having a youthful enthusiasm to pretend, even with a serious character such as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate?

A. There is no simple formula for it. Every job requires a completely different approach. (The Fifth Estate was) getting under the skin and understanding Julian and also the moral responsibility of being a storyteller about an issue and a man and many men and women whose freedom and personality are going to be perception-shaped by what we do. That there are real lives we might affect for this story was a huge burden. It was something that was very important for me to get right. That was another consideration that's well beyond a sense of play.

The only thing that may unite all forms of acting in a sense is no matter what preparation you do, no matter what transformative process you go through, you are always yourself. You are always inside your own skin — you are who you are no matter what the actions of the movement or the effect.

You have to have an essential element of you and that is also what is in the present. Once you're in the present and you're not worried about the wig or the special-effects suit or the dialogue or the accent or the moral responsibility, when you are lost in the moment and you're in the present is when the stuff that's really good comes on screen. Until that point, you've put in a lot of hard work to then let go, and all of us experience moments — and they're rare in every job I find — where you feel free of any kind of self-consciousness.

A. It's been incredible, and such a variety of work. Overexposure is always the thing I'm frightened of but it's just the way it happened. My workload exploded over the last couple of years, but they've all come home to roost this autumn. That's just chance — that's just how the movie industry harvests, I guess. I remember Jessica Chastain having this kind of a moment two years ago where all that brilliant work she did came out in one sudden moment.

It's an embarrassment of riches, but it's kept me very, very busy. I'm heading off into Christmas now and getting ready for a nice long break just to regroup and see where to go next. I cannot wait to be on my time and be impulsive and move at my own pace.

And the third season of Sherlock is coming.

Q. Last thing we saw of that show was everybody thinking your ace detective was dead. Anything you can tease about what's happening when it returns to PBS Jan. 19?

A. There's a reunion and there's an explanation and there's a marriage and there's a new villain on the scene. There's an awful lot to enjoy in the three films we've made of it. And trust me, they're films — they are really richly detailed and you don't go away feeling unsatisfied. There's so much in all of them.

I've seen the first two and they're terrific. I haven't seen the third yet, but I knew when we were doing that one it was going to be really special. They're all very different and they all hold their own.

Q. Do you have a next project yet?

A. I know for certain I'm doing Hamlet sometime in autumn on the London stage, and before that there are all sorts of film projects flying around, but the one that looks most real at the moment is Lost City of Z with James Gray.

Q. What was your best day in 2013?

A. Oh, that's a good question. It's been a long year to flip back through since there's been so many moments. I've met some extraordinary people and had some amazing experiences. I've had some wonderful moments of calm and isolation as well amongst all the circus and hype. I've met some wonderful fans, I've had some fantastic relationships, I've been with some extraordinary comrades and fellow workers.

Days on set of The Imitation Game playing Alan Turing was an amazing experience and wrapping the third season of Sherlock was a rather emotional and proud moment.

Q. I'm sure you live for the quiet times, too, though.

A. Being home in London's great when people respect my privacy. You can just take a beat or a moment or two and find there's still islands of calm in your day anywhere you are. Everyone does that in their own way in work and any kind of life that involves other people.

It could be anything. It could be drinking at a sunset for a second or two, it could be going on a holiday to some far-flung place and getting away from it all, and it could be dissolving into a book at bedtime.

Or it could just be bedtime. Bedtime's always nice. (Laughs)

Q. Who's the coolest person you met this year?

A. I would say Harrison Ford's up there. I didn't actually meet him this year, we'd met before but he was so lovely to me on The Graham Norton Show. That was very, very cool.

Oh, who else? God, this is embarrassing. Who am I forgetting?

My mind always goes blank at things like this. Somebody said, "What's your favorite place on Earth? Tell us about a place you've been to the last couple of years." My mind went blank, and then I stepped out of the room and went, "(Expletive)."

Being 15,000 feet up in a plane in New Zealand was pretty (expletive) fantastic as was landing after the parachute jump. Going to Big Sur. Stepping on the Star Trek bridge for the first time. Seeing people's homes that are fantastic. Walking into my own flat for the first time after it was finished. Seeing someone that I know and love very well get better from a terrible illness was one of the great moments of this year, to be honest.

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born in London on July 19, 1976 to a couple of accomplished actors in their own right, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton. A chip off the old block, Benedict followed in his parents’ footsteps after studying theater at the University of Manchester and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

The versatile thespian’s impressive list of credits includes outings as Stephen Hawking in Hawking, as William Pitt in Amazing Grace, and as Vincent Van Gogh in Van Gogh: Painted with Words. He also appeared in Atonement, The Other Boleyn Girl, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the Hobbit and War Horse.

This year alone, he’s starred in The Fifth Estate, 12 Years a Slave, August: Osage County, Star Trek into Darkness and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. And on television, he reprised his title role in the PBS Masterpiece series Sherlock Holmes.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that busy Benedict was just named Artist of the Year by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In addition, he was on the cover of Time Magazine in October and was ranked #1 by Empire Magazine on its 2013 list of the 100 Sexiest Movie Stars.

Here, he talks about life, career and his latest film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, where he does double-duty as the voice of both Smaug and the Necromancer.

KW: I told my readers I’d be interviewing you, so I’ll be mixing their questions in with my own.

BC: Sure.

KW: Documentary filmmaker Kevin Williams says: Congratulations on being the "It" actor of 2013. How does it feel to be one of the hottest actors out there?

BC: It’s fantastic! I’m very wary though, wanting to build a career based on longevity. My eyes on the prize is doing this for the next forty-odd years, I guess, judging by McKellen’s [Hobbit co-star Sir Ian McKellen] standards. He’s a man in his early seventies still giving extraordinary, sensational, entertaining, inventive and energized performances. So, I’m thrilled that it’s been such a great couple of years for me, but I’ve been working professionally for over a decade now. Yes, I’m trying to enjoy this moment, but at the same time, I’m sort of focused on my long-term goal of carving out a career that’s for life, rather than being a flash in the pan. And I think the projects I’ve been picking have given me a good grounding for that.

KW: No doubt!

BC: I know Kevin’s question is very benign. Honestly, it’s very satisfying, and I’m very, very happy about how successful the last few years have been. It‘s a lovely reward for the hard work and faith put into me very early in my career. It’s great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I’m enjoying now. It feels like there’s a lot of goodwill behind the support from them. This is an odd profession, and sometimes people get jealous, but I haven’t really experienced any of that. Everyone’s been really happy for me, which is really, really great.

KW: Kate Newell says: I feel a lot of pressure to be freakishly astute, since you’re so brilliant, especially as Sherlock Holmes. Your characters are always the smartest person in the room. Would you ever take a part that's all about brawn?

BC: Hell yeah! I absolutely would, Kate. Over the summer, I did a short film called Little Favour which I think you can still find on iTunes. In it, I play a character called Wallace who’s smart but he’s not the smartest. He gets taken over by circumstances and there’s quite a bit of brawn going on in that. And there was both brawn and brain in Khan. [The character he played in Star Trek into Darkness] But, yeah, I love the idea of playing something stupid or romantic. I’m not the smartest man in the room. I listen, and I learn, and I observe, but I’m always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That’s great fun, even though it’s as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me. [Chuckles] Sherlock’s extraordinarily intelligent; I’m lazy and ignorant by comparison. I like mixing it up, and I’d love to do some more brawn, so I’m all up for that, Kate.

KW: Children’s book author Irene Smalls was wondering whether you like the “motion capture” style of acting you employed in The Hobbit? Does playing Smaug and the Necromancer give you more freedom and artistic license, or less? BC: It’s really thrilling! We started both characterizations with motion capture physical work in the theater space they call the volume, where all your motions are picked up on these sensors from the reflectors on this weird, rather embarrassing gray jumpsuit you wear. I loved it! The first time I stepped off the volume I felt like a complete knob. Everyone fussed over me, offering me coffee or juice. They treated me like a colleague who’d just arrived at the office, ignoring the fact that I was wearing a gray onesy with dots on it, had my face painted like an aborigine, and had a headset on with a camera in front of my eyes. Once I got over feeling so self-conscious, thanks to their treating me normally, I had so much fun. I felt like a kid. It’s really freeing. You have no marks to worry about, and very few technical restrictions, especially for something that’s so bound in technology. You don’t have to worry about your hair, makeup, continuity, or even other actors. There’s no one you’re affecting other than your own performance. If you get a line wrong, you go straight back and start again. So, you really can use your imagination and do whatever you want. It’s really kind of like playing, and being a kid again. It’s wonderful! And they gave me this great tool in the final session, a device which lowers your voice by a couple of octaves, which means you can color it, tone it, and pitch it with more detail. That was great fun to play with.

KW: How familiar were you with The Hobbit before signing on to do the trilogy?

BC: My dad read it to me originally when I was young. So, it was the first imaginary landscape I ever had in my head from the written word. It gave me a passion for reading, thanks to my dad’s performance of the book. My memory of his performance was a jumping off point for my portrayals. Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They’re all “physically inhabited,” for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail. Conan Doyle [Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle] is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock’s posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.

KW: Who would have ever guessed that someone was going to come along and eclipse Basil Rathbone in the role?

BC: Oh, thanks, but I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t think anyone’s going to eclipse Basil or Jeremy Brett, for that matter. I get away with it because it’s a modern era version. I think the criticism might be harder, if we were set in the Victorian era. What I think is beautiful about ours is that it’s done with such love and reverence for the original stories. So, it’s new, but like an old friend at the same time.

KW: True. I was very impressed with how richly you developed your role as Stephen Hawking, despite his being confined to a wheelchair and having very limited mobility.BC: Thanks. That was a very physical performance, about a man besieged by neuromuscular disease in his early twenties. Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it’s so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well. KW: Kevin also says: You were outstanding playing Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate and really brought him to life for the audience.

BC: I really appreciate the compliment, Kevin.

KW: How did you prepare to play a person who is very much alive and in the public eye?

BC: It was tricky. There’s a huge amount of footage of Julian online, but he’s usually in presentation or defending mode, talking about his cause, or the revelations which Wikileaks have brought about. There’s none of Assange relaxing or in private mode. There’s none of the personality I tried to give him behind closed doors. That made it very hard. And obviously he didn’t want me to have access to him in preparing for the role, because he felt the film was going to be damaging to his cause. I think it’s been anything but, but there you go. So, I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of his character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.

KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier says: I thought you were great in The Fifth Estate. What is your assessment of Julian Assange?

BC: That would be difficult for me, because I genuinely don’t know him well. To authenticate an opinion, I really would have to meet him. I know that might sound perverse because I played him but, honestly, I don’t think it would be fair for me to judge the man. I realize that makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I was portraying him a certain way, but we were always open to the fact that this was an interpretation, not any kind of exact evidence of who the man was. So, my assessment of him is a professional one, really, of what he’s managed to achieve, and the idea that he came up with, which set the world alight and continues to inspire others like Snowden [NSA leaker Edward Snowden], about the secret goings-on that are done in our name with our tax dollars on behalf of big business or politics. He launched the revolutionary idea that citizens can start to claim back a paradigm for questioning power structures and those in authority through an anonymous, whistle-blowing website. That’s a very powerful social tool. He came up with the idea. He came up with the algorithms to protect sources. It’s begun a fascinating revolution in how we deal with data and revelations and structures. From that point of view, he has my utmost admiration, even though I’m yet to meet the guy. I understand from those who adore him, he has a great sense of humor which rarely gets an airing because he’s dealing with such serious issues. I know he’s a man of fierce determination, and now living under the strain of house arrest in the Ecuadorean embassy as a “political exile,” as he calls himself. I’d love to meet Julian, and time permitting, and his will permitting, I’m sure it will happen at some point. Even though he’s been very critical of the film, he’s been very polite about me and my work, and I feel the same way about him. I am also full of admiration for Chelsea Manning [formerly PFC Bradley Manning]. Regardless of which side of the argument you’re on, he stood up for something he felt wasn’t right. That was an extraordinarily brave thing to do, and I think he was unfairly punished for it. It’s a really big deal what he did, and he did it for the betterment of all us, including the soldiers on the ground, as well as the civilians caught up in those conflicts.

KW: Patricia also says: I enjoyed your work in 12 Years a Slave. What does Solomon Northup’s story mean to you?

BC: It means a great deal to me, because even though it’s from an earlier time, let’s face it; it’s not about a very distant past. There are still huge inequalities. There’s still nearly the same amount of slavery, if not more, in the world today, as there was at the height of the slave trade. As for Solomon, a free man with a family who was dragged away from his domestic environment and had his freedom taken away from him, that terrifying story of his barbaric treatment is a universal one which is a warning to all of us. The story serves as a metaphor for the fear of having your family taken away, and for being abused in such a horrific way. I lost it a lot of times watching that film, particularly when seeing the grace of the man when he finally makes it back home aged, changed, forever brutalized, and yet he apologizes to his family for his long absence. That was such a profoundly moving moment capturing the triumph of dignity over the disgraceful behavior of those involved in the slave trade.

KW: Patricia would like to know what movie projects your company, SunnyMarch, has in the works.

BC: Well, Patricia, we’re very busy at the moment, but we’re working on it. We’re sort of amalgamating material and options right now. I’m very excited about all the offers and interest and support pouring in through crowd-funding, and about having a lovely gap coming up when I’ll finally be able to sit down with books and scripts and talk to my partners about how we take the company forward. That’s a long winded way of saying, we don’t know yet, but we’re working on it. You’ll know about it, when it happens. We’d like to go in a lot of different directions.

KW: The Harriet Pakula-Teweles question: With so many classic films being redone, is there a remake you'd like to star in?

BC: That’s a good question, Harriet. Boy, something with Bogie in it! I’d love to do a noir. The Big Sleep. Or Casblanca! Why not? You can’t remake Casablanca. Maybe The Great Escape. I think Steve McQueen is so cool. But a classic film is a classic film, and perhaps the fantasy of being those characters should be left alone. You’re treading on very thin ice.

KW: The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book you read?

BC: The middle of the series of five Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn.

KW: What is your favorite dish to cook?

BC: A really lovely, super fruit and chicken salad.

KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

BC: The same person I saw the last time I looked, only a lit bit older, and a little bit wiser, too, hopefully.

KW: The Uduak Oduok question: Who is your favorite clothes designer?

BC: I have to say Spencer Hart, because they’ve been so supportive of me. They’ve got a Rat Pack, Old World, sort of Hollywood glamour about them but with an English twist. You just can’t get smarter than a Spencer Hart suit in London. Having said that, I’ve very much enjoyed the Alexander MacQueen which I’ve worn in the past, and Dolce & Gabbana which I wore last night. They’re better known. I think if I’m going to give a shout out to anyone, I think it should be to Spencer Hart.

KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?

BC: Falling off a swing and cracking my head at about 4 or 5 in my grands’ [grandparents’] garden in Brighton. I can recall seeing the horizon tip, and then feeling this thudding pain in the back of my head. Wait, I have even earlier memories of clouds whisking by while sitting in the pushchair on the roof of my parents’ flat. I loved it! I just loved staring at the clouds and dreaming away.

KW: Thanks again for the time, Benedict, and best of luck with all your endeavors.

“When you do Sherlock in London, it becomes street theatre. When we’re in Gower St, it’s barmy. A massive element of our day is crowd control. It’s weird, you go out onto the street and you actually get this bubble of performance anxiety like you do if you’re going on stage. It’s really hard. I mean if I went like that [makes hand signal], then a load of people would laugh, someone would say, ‘What did he do?’ Then they’d review it on their phones, post it, and put it on the internet as me dancing on the top of a hedgehog to Michel Jackson or whatever it is they fancy doing that day. It’s kind of weird. Me and Martin end up finishing the day double exhausted because we’re trying to do a job at the same time.Before, I’ve just gone up and said, ‘Look, this is kind of our office, you’ve got to respect that. It’s a public space, you have every right to be here, and we f***ing love the fact you’re this keen on it. It’s amazing and we love you a lot, and yet at the same time we need to keep doing what we’re doing. We have to keep making the programme, making it good, so we’ve got something we can be proud of. I know you can understand that [so], if you haven’t been here before, please just be quiet while we’re taping, take your rubbish with you, and they’re like, ‘We will!’ For the most part it’s not needed, they’re very, very intelligent, engaged people. But yes, normally, you raise an eyebrow and it causes a ripple of applause.”On making the cover of Time magazine

“I completely f***ing forget it was a cover, I just thought it was going to be a story inside. And I was honored by being one of the very few actors who get a profile inside of the magazine. When it came out literally thought it was a mock up that a fan had done: I thought, ‘That’s not my hand!’ So when I found out it was a reality I was genuinely floored. Floored in the same way I just sat on the sofa with one of my boyhood heroes [Harrison Ford], and he said to me, ‘I love what you do’. I just thought ‘Wow!’ I mean, two speechless moments, incredible moments.”On wanting to be an actor

“I think, going into it, I had self-belief in my talent. I think you have to have a certain amount of confidence, just because you have to risk failure. Obviously there was a lean into that with mum and dad, and [then it] became a thing of, is this a career choice I’m really going to make? Am I going to aim my sights for this? I knew the pitfalls were and the realities of it. So I just thought, I have to do this. But I wanted further education, I wanted to kind of have that maturation before I started acting because I felt that … I don’t know really. Except that I genuinely wanted to carry on learning and being with friends. And also, frankly, maybe I wasn’t good enough at the time. I’ve read about me where it says I ‘toyed with’ being a lawyer – I mean, you don’t ‘toy’ with being a lawyer, you think very seriously about it, and I don’t think I was smart enough. And I didn’t really try in the end, so it’s kind of a closed book on that, but people often say ‘Maybe you just weren’t smart enough’. Well, you know, the friends I have who are lawyers areincredibly smart.”On working with his idol, Gary Oldman, on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

“I really treat every job as if it’s the first time I’ve worked, otherwise I would be paralysed with fear. Like, otherwise, going onto a set with Gary Oldman, I couldn’t do it. You have to normalize that by becoming a co-worker. I mean, I remember Tom [Hardy] being really, really intimidated by Gary when he first met him, and I think I probably was too – I think he was in a corridor, and he was quite silent. He’s actually quite shy Gary. He just looked me up and down in silence, and I just didn’t quite know what to say. Little did I know the man was harbouring huge fears about the shoes he was going to step into. And I just thought he was sizing me up! But he wasn’t!”.On not being on Twitter

“I DO sleep, unlike James Franco, and I know lots of other people who are busier than me, and they’re just better at being concise. And while that would be a good exercise, I would much rather put my energies into other things to be honest. And that’s no disrespect for the people who are on Twitter, I’ve just said from the beginning that social media is not where I’m at, with my job, it just isn’t. There’s a certain amount of me that likes to respect the idea that my work is public but my life isn’t. You’re really asking for an awkward bleed if you’re talking about who you’ve just seen, and where you’ve just met them. But who knows, maybe I’ll decide it’s a game I’d like to play? At the moment I’m just really enjoying the space I’ve got in the public, which is through my work, and this is an extraordinary year.”On 12 Years A Slave

“I saw a screening before Toronto [film festival], because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make the screening at the festival, but also I wanted to see it away from an audience, and let the impact of the film play out on me. Because I’m only playing a small role in it, I knew I could do that at a first viewing, and when you’re a lead or a role bigger than the one I’ve got in it, you just get in the way of being immersed in the film. But the way this evolves it wasn’t too distracting. I watched it, and I couldn’t look anywhere afterwards. When I was walking through Soho, everything was on mute, and I looked at every bit of Georgian or Victorian architecture, it just grabbed me, every brick looked complicit. The phone in my hand that I was trying to type some congratulations to Chiwetel [Ejiofor] and Steven [McQueen], I could only think that the elements in these chips, the logos everywhere, the stark multinational logos. [Slavery] still exists, it’s worse than ever. There are different forms of slavery, there’s debt slavery, where people are born into a situation that even though they work and earn money they’ll never get out of debt; there’s child labour, there’s child soldiers, there’s … just the f***ing thing goes on and on, you know. I mean, sex trafficking! All of that. And [in Soho] it was this gauche-rash-Friday-night-blargh-end-of-the-week-piss-up atmosphere, and I couldn’t hear any of that, it was all on mute. It was f***ing extraordinary film. I really do think it’s a modern classic. It’s a masterpiece.”On Julian Assange leaking their email exchange

“Yes, the emails came out, not the whole exchange, but he was very courteous about it. He asked if I minded him publishing it and to be honest, I knew I was writing to a publisher, so I was very aware that my responses and my emails might get published. And he’s been very respectful about that. He wrote to me where he expressed his concerns very clearly and it’s a powerful argument. And I wrote back a response, which I didn’t publish in response to him publishing his argument, and at some stage in these email he wrote ‘To Your Eyes Only’. I said, ‘Look, Julian, you know, this is as far I am concerned a gentleman’s agreement that this goes no further. It’s not for publication. Unless you want to, and you’re a publisher, but I’d love to have that gentleman’s agreement.’ So, gentlemanly, he came to me and said, “Do you mind?” And I said, ‘Well, no of course, and what does it matter if I do?’ You have to do what you have to do, I understand why you want to get traction on this and get your voice heard about a project that you think is pretty damaging to you. I mean, I think he’s smart enough to realise this is not all about me, it’s really not.”On his Oscar chances playing Assange

“I mean, I think so, but then I never really held out for this, I’m just thankful that it has positioned me as someone who is capable of doing that kind of a role. And whether the film has a big box office or not, it’s still the response of how I have performed as him has done me huge favours. But really, who knows what might happen? Who knows? But from what I’ve seen and what I’ve read is coming out, the strength of performances … it’s a bumper f***ing crop of amazing films this year, it’s really exciting.”On his inquisitive nature

“I mean I’m certainly inquisitive, and I have better attention now than I did. I think I’m better at focusing my learning now. I love that about what I do about my job too. But also the position of access if gives you for incredible minds and incredible opportunity. It’s fascinating. And to be able to have conversations with other artists in other mediums as well. To understand what their concerns. So I feel more galvanized with my learning now that I used to do. You know, I hold my hands up, people say you didn’t go to Oxbridge, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t bright enough, it might have been that though. I don’t know, maybe I should test myself! Or, maybe not, maybe my IQ is 70 or something! But I’m definitely curious, I’m eager to learn, I always have been.”On George Clooney

“It was great talking to a man like him. I really do think he wears it so well, his fame, so, so well, and while every one of us has our detractors, while one man’s elixir is another man’s poison, no-one is everyone’s favourite, I think there is a pretty universal respect for what he does both as a humanitarian and as an actor. And he is very good at wearing his fame, he’s so courteous. There’s none of that, ‘Urgh, here we go, I’m going to put on a mask now’, it’s just, ‘Hi, hey, I’m George’, and you don’t see the cracks of, ‘Pffff, I hate this, these people are in my face’. I think that’s because genuinely he realises we’re very f***ing lucky. And he uses his fame for such potent and great causes.”On living in London

"I am really lucky to be in London. You come out of your front door and you have everything. And it’s not the case in America so much. There’s a big film industry in LA and a big film industry in New York, but the business of film is pretty much predominantly in LA. And I saw James do that, I saw McAvoy do that, he’s letting the work to come to him, and I thought great. I really admire people like Matthew Rhys and others who by hard graft got their breaks and are now taking it, but I don’t think I have the stomach for that, for literally sitting by the pool reading script after script and signing up for five years for a pilot and not knowing what it’s going to be like. And London feeds me culturally - I go to galleries, to music, to films, and everything else, as well as the broad and varied canvases of work I get to do. And there’s nowhere else in the world that really has that. You know, I’ll go and work in LA for months on end, of course I will, and doing Star Trek out there was amazing, playing the bad guy in the biggest film at the time, working in the studio with JJ and that cast was thrilling. A dream. I love that in London, that you have so much on your doorstep, I mean I take the Tube, I go around on my bike, you can achieve a certain anonymity and be famous here. I mean, on the tube, rush hour is fine, because literally you can’t even see the person next to you."On holding papers to camera on the Sherlock set

"Ok, well, the first instance was more, this is ridiculous guys, I’m going on set in heavy disguise because I don’t want people to speculate about the state of make up I’ve got on and what I’m wearing, because I want that to be revealed to people enjoying it on a Sunday night in a couple of months’ time, rather than internet gossip, and they’re still trying to get long lens shots! So it was just, you know, go take a more practical photograph of something that’s more important that some actor going to set! And it wasn’t to lecture my audience, or beat down on celebrity culture, there’s every reason why the high-minded can exist with pop culture. And I get that, I get that as much as the next person, I get why my life is a source of intrigue. And it’s an immovable obstacle, and you’re screaming in the wind and it’s stupid if you don’t accept that. And it was literally on my television before I came out, the day of the riots, in square in the summer. It wasn’t about political posturing, it was purely a message to that photographer, saying, dude, don’t waste your time. And the other one, again, it was just at the time it had happened with [David] Miranda [the partner of then Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald] being detained at the airport and hard drives being destroyed at the Guardian, and it really worried me. It’s a complex argument, and all I wanted to do was ask the question - I had the media audience on my back, and it was just a case of what do you think of this?”On appearing on David Letterman

"I was so nervous, I was so tired, and he’s so legendary, he is a master at it. The producers asked me my name, but yet he was like, ‘Next up, Ben-Er-Dick-Cum-Ber… Batch. Whoever the f*** that is. After this break. In a minute. Let’s talk about Iguanas wearing a hat!’, then, ‘What is this,Star Wars? Star Trek?’ And I was trying, God knows I’ve done it enough times. And [after they played the clip of Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness], he was like, ‘Wow!’ That was very nice. It was incredible. And all the producers laughed about it. It was a genuine reaction [from him]. They said to me he just doesn’t say that, it was genuine. It’s normally, ah, looks great buddy, good luck. They said they hadn’t seen a reaction like that [from him] for years.”On Downton Abbey"Well, not that I was ever offered [a role], but I mean, I think in certain circumstances I think I certainly would have done it. It hasn’t hurt Dan Stevens. And Dan had done great work before that. Downton is a populist vehicle, which is great."On wine

"That’s something I do like to spend a bit of money on. I do like to go a bit above the good £15 bottle in a newsagent, there’s nothing better. I don’t like more than really a glass, but if I’ve got friends over I will spend more on a bottle, like £40 or £50 for something really special, possibly, more, but not like, hey, look at my really expensive bottle of wine. It’s just such a pleasure but it’s something I have to share with other people. I’m not a solitary drinker, I never have been, and if I do that with a good bottle of wine I end up throwing half of it away. And I’ve done that once, and I don’t want to do it again. I’m not one of those people who thinks, oh, it’s there, I’ll just drink it! I just can’t. I don’t enjoy that sensation, I like being fit enough to read a book or do my work or see a film or just … and it’s not to say I don’t let loose, but not on my own."On auditioning for Madonna’s W. E.

"It was extraordinary. I was literally in the middle of previewing After the Dance, I think we’d done our second preview, so half of my mind was on that, and in the process of it went on a bit, and James [D’Arcy] was already there, as was the lovely Natalie Dormer, and when I went through into the room [at Madonna’s London house], there were cameras, and this is not a story to tell at her expense, because she is extraordinary, but it was such an odd situation. My usual experience of auditions is that you do things in front of a camera and you send off a tape, or you get the opportunity to speak to someone in a room, to talk though, the process, it’s collaborative, and that’s always the preference. And that’s what this was, but she wanted to operate the camera too! She was really stressed out because she was trying to figure out people’s availability at the same time, she brought her producers’ hat on. And brought all of that in a really guileless lovely way, but it was kind of extraordinary and a bit discombobulating to the usual Brit actor dong an audition, because she was learning her craft, she’s not a seasoned director. She walked in and went, ‘Ahh, you actors are such a f***ng nightmare, the scheduling is just impossible!’Then she said, ‘Ooh, yeah, you’re the one with the strange name!’ And I think I said something along the lines of, ‘Yes, I am, Madonna.’ And she then smiled wryly. Which was quite amusing. We did the audition, it was in a beautifully floored gym area in her house, and she was setting the cameras and lighting up, really setting it up into a proper scenario, quite full-on for an audition, and part of me was saying this is not good, and she was setting up this shot, and it involved moving a mirror. And she went, ‘F***, my floor! Uhm, you need to meet in the middle… and …’. And so I just said, “Look, you’re going to tell is where our frame is, we’re going to cross over - it was about him and the brother meeting in the hall way and having an argument - and so we did it, and she said, ‘You’ve done this before’, and I said, ‘Huh, yeah, maybe I have!”On performing the Sherlock monologues

"You read the scripts, and you go ‘Great!’ And then you go, ‘Oh no’. Because it is really hard. I think my process has improved, but when I get behind it is a mess. I mean, when it’s the sweet spot, it’s the wonderful thing, but you pull it off about once or twice in a about five takes. It’s really hard. It’s really hard to be slightly ahead [goes into Sherlock monologue speed] because-you’re-literally-speaking-at-the-speed-of-thought-and-you-can’t-think-what-you’re-going-to-say-next-and-I’m-trying-to-do-it-now-and-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-going-to-say-next-look-at-that-over-here, and yet this really isn’t random association, it’s really specific. And then just the performance of it, and not because it’s a struggle, because the writers when they pull it off there’s a sparkle in it. It’s hell, but it’s very satisfying to get right. But you know sometimes, I drop the ball and it’s hard. I’m not lazy, I work very hard, but I’m not a quick learner. It’s like we were talking about being clever, that’s another reason I guess. It just takes me a long time. It’s amazing when it just feels like air, when it just feels easy to do and you can just play with the nuance of it, and I hit a couple of those sweet spots, which is where you’re completely involved in what you’re doing and you believe in it, and you can move in any direction of it, and you’re not in fear of the pattern being broken."On Tom Hardy

"Tom is like an incredible factory, he’s like a hungry puppy, he sort of sucks the oxygen into his flame, and sometimes it doesn’t leave you much room to manoeuvre but we became such good friends on that shoot [for Stuart: A Life Backwards], because it suited the dynamic, because I was very much in thrall to the spectacle of this human being, that was the dynamic. I mean, I’ve never worked with Daniel [Day-Lewis], but I imagine you can’t talk to him about his process while he’s in the middle of it. And Tom, very much the opposite, he shoots the breeze, comes out of character, then snaps back into character. And people talk about him being a method actor - I don’t know what that means any more, he’s just really good!"On women wanting to sleep with him

"You know. George [Clooney] was talking to me and he said, ‘Oh God, all these stories coming up! You know, it’s so much about projection.’ And that’s why I am happy about it, because to me it’s not just about the way I look, it’s about some appropriation of the work and what I carry with me."On Stefan Moffat saying he’s ‘two degrees to the left of handsome’

"Yeah, yes! And he’s absolutely right! And I’ve never really been able to trade off my looks before. And that’s the other thing about this discussion of whether I’m a leading man, it’s situational. If you prove your actions are heroic, or as a character, you are a leading man, it doesn’t matter whether you look like a movie star.It’s almost extraordinary that Sherlock is attractive, just because, however dangerous, and however much you may come under his criticism and rejection, and it’s quite a powerful presence to be in, and women are attracted to that…and I get it. I mean, they all want to fix Sherlock! And with James [McAvoy], you know, women just want to go up and hug him, , you know, ooh! You know, the boy dying of cancer whose birthday it could have been! I think it can also be a great incumbent, when beautiful people try to get taken seriously as actors, it’s a f***ing struggle. I think wherever we’re at, we’re always looking at the other angle. I think it’s very important for the long game not to think about this kind of shit. Because otherwise you’re like, oh no, I’ve got frown lines on my forehead! You know, who cares? The only time I care is if I’m being younger for a character, like I had it the other day with [Alan] Turing, and I thought, okay, this is a period where he’s 25, and it’s when you first see him in the film, and there’s a long journey he goes on, it’s tragic and beautiful and disturbing and amazing, and to get that right you have to have something at the beginning where you have this person who is younger than me, ten years younger, and that’s the only time. In normal life, I don’t give a monkey’s arse if I’m going a bit wrinkly or have been described as going a bit grey of having receding hair. Or whatever the f*** it is that people write in gossip columns. You know, it can go on forever. You know, I don’t look at Humphrey Bogart and think, “you look old”. I think he looks like an actor. I remember with George Clooney there was some controversy with Michael Clayton. The studio was having a bit of a whine because he wasn’t shot from particularly flattering angles!”On meeting his fans

"I’ve had a very peculiar reaction, it was at the stage door and I think this girl had come from either China or South Korea, and she started to go green and shake and started sobbing, and I just went up and said, look, this is quite strange for me, because I understand in a way, because I’m still an audience member, I still watch people and get dumbstruck when I meet them in person, but what you have to do to really enjoy what you’re about. And then I sort of tried to shake her hand, and she sort of went, ARGH! Just fear and anxiety and not being able to manage the reaction. You know, I am just human, I walk amongst you! You know, we share the same circumstances, we’re born and we die."On Star Wars

"Urgh! I mean, I think everyone is talking about it apart from JJ and me! Look, I mean, maybe when there’s a script we’ll know for certain, but from what I understand the heroes are really, really young, so that’s late teens early twenties, and then I don’t know, maybe there’s a baddie in there? But I think both JJ and I realise we’ve just done that with another massive sci-fi film, so that obviously hinders things a bit. I mean, there’s a possibility, of course there is, and JJ knows how much I would love to be a part of it, simply because, more than Star Trek, it really was something I grew up with. It does make me want to do it even more as well [that people want him to do it]. I don’t know. It would be terribly disappointing I suppose if I didn’t, but I completely understand what the reasoning might be, which is that this is too close to what we’ve already done, and what it is that I could do in this film. I mean, JJ and I are yet to have that discussion and I don’t even know how many of them he is developing at the one time. I’m pretty sure he’s working up one part of three and the spin-off films, there’s a shit load more.”On landing the role of Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness

"I remember with Khan I only found out about it three weeks before I was on set. I remember I was in a Cineworld in Cardiff, and Mark Gatiss [Sherlock co-creator] was like ‘OH MY GOD!’ I’m not a trekkie, I didn’t know … and not for a second did he go, ‘You’re not the right ethnicity!’"On Star Trek fans voting Into Darkness the worst Trek film of all time

"I was really proud of my work in that film and I was really proud of that film. I think it’s had serious political impact and themes that are subtly nuanced and interwoven, and yet it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Critics and those who have seen it are really appreciative of the work I’ve done, and I can’t battle expectations, I can’t say that it’s right or wrong, whether it’s the worst Star Trek of all time according to the convention in Las Vegas. They were scrabbling for microphones to deplore it and JJ Abrams. I was just thrilled to paint a real really rich bad guy, a complex bad guy, in such an intelligent franchise. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s not to infuriate fans who hate me or it or Khan in the timeline or having him under disguise. I think because of the alternative timeline they feel they’re being cheated out of the real Star Trek. I’m not a Trekkie, and so I don’t have a place to say this, and I really would stress that if you’re going to include this…. of course he’s moving away from the traditional view of Star Trek, but at the same time there’s a lot of the original in this story, and maybe I can see why Star Trek fans feel it was glib, just a reversal, it was Spock trying to save Kirk.”December 16th 2013

A recent trip to the Himalayas with friends is mentioned and his year in Tibet.

Q2 You played one of the most controversial characters: Assange.

He says he likes to portray radical characters and that he admires Assange deeply.

Q3 What was your fave subject at Uni?

Literature, as he’s always admired people who are capable of translating enlightening ideas to paper.

Q4/Q5 Do you have a fave movie and is there a director you’d like to work with?

Gary Oldman. Daniel Day Lewis.

Lawrence of Arabia with its fantastic actors and locations. As much as Hamlet for the theatre, this movie represents the real link between cinema and culture for him.

He’d like to work with Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese.

Q6 What is your fave music?

The one that can translate a thought. He’s very much into Radiohead.

Q7 How do you spend your days?

There isn’t a specific routine, because of the kind of job he’s chosen. An example could be when he was shooting 12Y and, even when he spent time in a hotel room he was still completely fascinated by the place and the people living in New Orleans.

Q8 Is there a particular place where one of your movies was filmed that is dear to your heart?

Yes, Nebraska and Oklahoma (AOC) with their spectacular landscapes and for the friendships created with the co-actors. However, he always misses the energy of London when he is abroad and would never move anywhere else.

Q9 Do you usually use the Internet, smartphones and laptops?

No, although he finds the cyberspace fascinating. Still, books like the ones by Tolkien are much more stimulating for him.

Q10 You attended a Catholic School, did it shape you somehow?

No and he’s also embraced a more Buddhist approach to life, even if he doesn’t follow any religion.

Q11 There is a religious element in STID, as well…

He says it’s more spiritual that religious.

Q12 Do you prefer J. Watson or S. Holmes?

Always liked both characters.

Q13 Do you think you represent the quintessentially British elegance?

He prefers classic outfits (velvet in particular) but enjoys jeans and jumpers very much, too.

Q14 Would you use the word snob or elitist to describe yourself?

The second one, as sometimes he finds it hard to go on when someone doesn’t really get what he means.

Q15 What are the important elements of friendship?

Energy. Availability. Advise and truthfulness. Meryl Streep had a potential to become a dear friend for him.

Q16/17 What are you looking for in a woman?

The world is overpopulated with models. He prefers more spontaneous and straightforward women (the same can be said about men in our society.)

Q18 How do you cope with the natural vanity of an actor?

Reading, studying, travelling, getting to know the world. He usually buys two newspapers a day and escapes the ones that try to manipulate reality.

Q19 Has you job changed you?

Not really and he still likes walking through London unnoticed, being himself and nothing else.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH INTERVIEW: 'I WENT TO PUBLIC SCHOOL, BUT I'M NOT A PUBLIC SCHOOL BOY'

Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch on being an 'expensive child', filming 12 Years A Slave, and why he likes to stir up debate

Sherlock lives! And judging by viewing figures in excess of 10 million and Twitter going wild to the tune of 260,000 tweets per hour during The Empty Hearse on New Year’s Day, the return of Benedict Cumberbatch’s lanky sociopathic detective will remain a highlight of 2014.

For the 37-year-old actor, it marks the start of a big, big year. When The Big Issue catches up with him at Charlotte Street Hotel in central London midway through filming the series finale, he looks more like a wealthy holidaymaker than one of the planet’s busiest actors. He bounds in, wearing a crisp white T-shirt, smart blue shorts and blue cloth cap, singing and loosely dancing to the music coming out of a pair of massive headphones…

How are you today, Benedict?

I’m actually feeling it a bit this morning. I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of running recently. It’s because I’m playing Alan Turing, who, as well as being an absolute genius, was a very good marathon runner. It’s great, though. I love it. Yep, I’m playing yet another brainy guy.

And is this role stretching your mind as well as your body?

Yes, like you wouldn’t believe! As well as running pretty much all the time, I’m carrying around the most ridiculous selection of books at the moment. But it’s great, and I’m learning so much. I’m loving it. I hope the plates keep spinning, so that I can keep finding these interesting roles and carve out a little niche for myself in the film world. And, you know, keep the work varied. I would love to get back on the stage.

So Sherlock returned on New Year’s Day. It’s trying to flesh him out?

There is a lot more backstory. There are a lot more scenes where you find out why he is the way he is. The first conversation I ever had with Steven Moffat about Sherlock was asking: “How did this happen?” His response was: “What do you mean, he’s just brilliant.” But someone isn’t just brilliant, there is something that has happened. I didn’t want Sherlock being easily labelled as being either on the spectrum of Asperger’s or autism. The reality of those problems and difficulties is very different in each individual case. It would have been lazy for us to just say: “Oh, that is what he is.” So that is examined a lot more in this series. After two years away, he is rusty about human relationships, especially with his best friend and with London. And it takes time for him to get back on his game. Will there be romance? No, no, no – romance is a foreign concept to him. There might be something in the arena of proximity. But there is no romance.

How do you keep him fresh?

That is one of the biggest challenges. We throw him into these situations in the 21st century and see how he copes, which is always amusing or revealing. But I think it is even more interesting to understand how he came to be like this, in the 21st century.

How much of a thrill is it to finally reveal how he survived?

Despite what it might look like, being bungeed is a lot of fun, falling onto an airbag is a lot of fun. People have their own theories, so I’m sure they will be going: “That’s good, that’s bad, that’s disappointing, that’s amazing…” If I was on the receiving end, watching it, I would be really excited to find out what was going on. But as the people presenting it, it is different. I feel we have done a very interesting thing with it. Do I enjoy the cat-and-mouse element of it? It just happens without me, so is not something I really take part in, to be honest. The only thing I am protective of is not wanting it to be spoilt for people who want to enjoy it on a Sunday night with their families. But it is great that we have such an ardent fanship, and that istestament to us doing something right.

So you’ve got, what, five big movies out at the end of 2013 and early this year… [A rare pause]

What was the fifth one? The Hobbit? Oh yeah! No, I’m joking forgetting about The Hobbit. Should I be worried about over-exposure? No, here is all the work I’ve been doing, I guess. I had a really busy year last year and the beginning of this year, and all of them are coming home to roost at about the same time, which is extraordinary. With Star Trek in the summer, then The Fifth Estate – which I was thrilled with, very excited. When I saw it in the States, it was terrifying. I cannot watch myself in something for the first time, especially something so removed from me, because everything about him is different. But I was thrilled. Bill [Condon, the director] made a beautiful film. It is incredibly balanced and intriguing, and what the film should do is ignite the debate. That is what should happen.

Oh yes, that’s great news. I’m very excited to see him in Doctor Who. He is a class act, Peter, and a great actor.

Are you using your profile to stir debate on issues that matter to you [recently Cumberbatch held up cards carrying slogans dealing with issues of privacy and governmental snooping when he knew he’d be papped]...

I know how lucky I am to be paid to be in a position to have a voice, do my work and also just the fact that it’s really good fun. You owe society a little bit for that – your fans for giving you a good life, but also yourself, just to pay back. I feel very strongly about the little work I do when I have the time. I try to be principled. Of course there is a part of me [that is] a bit of a do-gooder – keeping the moral slate cleaner. But it is really enjoyable and I get a kick from it. It is not a sense of duty, it actually makes me feel good to do things for other people, where it can make a difference to talk to people who wouldn’t normally have access to you, the kind of world you live in or the work you do.

Does your background come into play?

I have always been very grateful for the opportunities I have, because I wasn’t born into them, my mum and dad worked really hard to afford them. Mum made commercial choices – and dad as well – to keep me in school uniforms and keep the fees paid. I was like a walking mortgage! I was a very expensive child because of the way they tried to educate me. That was completely off their own bat. Dad had a pretty nasty experience at public school and was ready to pull me out at any moment if I didn’t enjoy myself. I didn’t have a great time – I had a mixed time. I really enjoyed some aspects, but I was far happier at the first school I went to. So I was of that world, but not because I was born into it. Not that that gives me any right to talk about how the other half live, or any other half – but it means, I guess, that I have a perspective on it. I’m not just what the label makes me look like, having been to a public school.

12 Years a Slave is hotly tipped for Oscar glory. And what a great cast…

Working with Steve McQueen and a fantastic cast was so special. I have scenes with Michael Fassbender and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is brilliant, and Michael Kenneth Williams from The Wire. I’m still to really get into The Wire – my box-sets were in storage for a while when my flat was being redecorated, but I loved the first series.

Does making movies change the way you’re perceived, or the way you perceive yourself?

What, now I’m a movie star? No, I’m joking. I want to be known as an actor – not as a film star, or theatre actor, or television actor, or Sherlock, or for just one role. I want to be known as an actor, and do a bit of everything. You don’t have time to sit on a deckchair and sup on a cocktail between takes when you are making a film. There is this idea that filming movies is luxurious whereas as television is all work and nothing else. They are both pretty demanding.

After all this book learning, could you imagine a future as a writer?

Writing? Oh God no. Well, maybe in the future some time, but not at the moment. I would prefer to direct than write. Behind the camera is where my future might be, I think. I would love to oversee a project from conception to completion. I would love to go on that full journey, because that is so much more than the actor gets – things stay in development for years, let alone the production and then the post-production, which goes on for at least as long as the production. I think that would be incredible…

SHERLOCK is back for its third season on PBS, Sundays at 10 PM, and not a moment too soon. The series, created by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat from Arthur Conan Doyle’s detail-oriented British detective character, has been much missed by its fans during the long gap since the end of Season 2, which saw Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock apparently falling to his death from a rooftop, much to the grief of his friend and detecting partner Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman). Now Sherlock is back – with an explanation of how and why he disappeared for two years and fooled Watson into believing he died.

Unlike Sherlock, Cumberbatch shows no signs of disappearing. The second-generation London-born actor, son of Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, has a large batch of feature film performances both recently released (Khan in STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, slave owner Ford in 12 YEARS A SLAVE, Julian Assange in THE FIFTH ESTATE, Midwesterner Little Charles in AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY and the dragon Smaug and the Necromancer in THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG) and upcoming (Alan Turing in THE IMITATION GAME), as well as the five-part miniseries PARADE’S END as the heroic Christopher Tietjens, which aired last spring on HBO.

Cumberbatch is at PBS’ portion of the Television Critics Association press tour to talk about SHERLOCK. Following a Q&A panel, he talks to a small group of reporters about all aspects of his career.

AX: As your parents are both actors, was it inevitable that you would become an actor?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: No. Not at all. I tried very hard not to be. I wanted to be a barrister. [As an actor], there were low expectations of employment, peripatetic, and everyone that came towards me, trainee barristers and lawyers, were like, “Go back now while you can.”

AX: Did your parents hope that you’d become an actor?

CUMBERBATCH: No, anything but. I mean, they’d worked really, really hard to afford me an education where I could be anything but an actor. They wanted me to do something else – they were brilliant at it. They have wonderful careers – it’s ongoing – but they wanted something better for me, as all parents do for their children, and they saw the pitfalls at the end of the street and didn’t want me to suffer those, so they were very selfless and wanted me to do anything but.

AX: Is there a particular pressure in playing Sherlock, who’s meant to be the most intelligent person on Earth?

CUMBERBATCH: Is he supposed to be the most intelligent person on Earth? I think he thinks he is, but you know.

AX: Do you just rely on the script as far as depicting his brain power?A wedding disrupts things on SHERLOCK on PBS | 2014 PBS

A wedding disrupts things on SHERLOCK on PBS | 2014 PBS

CUMBERBATCH: Yes. I’ve got one of the most intelligent scriptwriters on Earth helping out there and a couple of other [writers], so what you see on screen is just parroting his brilliance, and Doyle’s. It’s an interesting thing.

AX: Is there something you do as an actor to let us know that, “Okay, the wheels are turning” or do you just do what you’re doing and let us project?

CUMBERBATCH: I don’t know. You’ll have to look at that. I’m not my own audience enough to analyze that. I do what I do. You have an inner process and you hope that that translates, and often on film, that through the eye or the body can do that, because you’re looking in close-up, but I don’t like unpacking these things. It’s just like, what’s the point? You can look at all the magic tricks and how they’re all done and I suppose you could still enjoy putting it back together again, but I’d rather let other people do that.

AX: What’s your take on Sherlock’s status as a sex symbol, as he’s a character that doesn’t seem to be really interested in sex?

CUMBERBATCH: Non-threatening, unavailable, cruel – I mean, there are a lot of recipes to why that might be the case. I don’t know. He has a sexuality. There’s no doubt about it. It’s just he subsumes it in order to do his work. I’ve said that many times before, but the idea that he doesn’t know or hasn’t experienced sex I think is inaccurate.

AX: Can you say anything about your reported upcoming films FLYING FOREST or EVEREST or THE IMITATION GAME?

CUMBERBATCH: THE IMITATION GAME I’ve shot, and that’s happened. The other two haven’t been shot and haven’t happened, and the one that might be on at the moment for certain is THE LOST CITY OF Z, which is a James Gray picture.

AX: Is your character in LOST CITY different than ones that you’ve played before?

CUMBERBATCH: Pretty different. Pretty different. Percy [Fawcett] is an interesting character. He’s quite obsessive, he’s quite determined and strives to conquer everyone’s cynicism about thisEl Dorado, this lost city of gold that he believes exists in the Amazon. And it’s going to be really cool. It’s a brilliant filmmaker and fantastic characters.

AX: Would you consider doing an American TV series?

CUMBERBATCH: No.

AX: Why not?

CUMBERBATCH: Because if I do an English one [which has shorter seasons], there’s time – I want to do theatre and film as well as television.

AX: Do you have a favorite character that you’ve played?

CUMBERBATCH: Not really, but Christopher Tietjens [in PARADE’S END] is near it.

AX: Are there characters that you’d like to play?

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, there are a few. There’s a fantastic character, Patrick Melrose, in a series of novels called the Patrick Melrose novels that Edward St. Aubyn has written and I believe that David Nichols is doing an adaptation as we speak of those books. He’s one of Edward’s good friends. A phenomenal character.

AX: Is there any Olympic sport that you would like to do?

CUMBERBATCH: Snow-boarding. I didn’t make it this year, sadly.

AX: Are you good at it?

CUMBERBATCH: I wouldn’t say that, but yeah. When the insurers allow it – or they don’t sometimes – I just nip off and have a go. But I do like that.

AX: With respect to Steven Moffat’s other show DOCTOR WHO, would you be averse to some sort of crossover with SHERLOCK?

CUMBERBATCH: I would be very averse to that! [laughs]

AX: What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

CUMBERBATCH: The best advice I’ve ever gotten is, don’t spend too long in front of a load of journalists with Dictaphones [laughs]. I would say that’s the best advice I ever got. I’ve had a lot of good advice. Don’t go to the salmon in the buffet. I don’t know.

AX: Is there anything else you would like us to know about SHERLOCK right now?

Sherlock unceremoniously shoos them from the room when Watson arrives.

Working with his parents was “terrific. Sort of like home, really. Alarmingly so, for those who know our relationship off screen,” he jokes. “It was a beautiful thing. … It was the first day of shooting and I was nervous for them. And then I realized, now I really have to take control of this, and I just started to kind of make sure that they felt all right. And they ended up having a really good day.”

He credits his parents and actors they introduced him to for his desire to pursue the same career, but there “wasn’t one Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment of inspiration. It was just an accumulation, really.”

That has led to an accumulation of significant roles, too, for the London-born actor.

Cumberbatch, 37, finished work in December on The Imitation Game, an upcoming film in which he plays real-life British mathematician and World War II code breakerAlan Turing.

He plans to take on another real Brit, the explorer Percy Fawcett, in The Lost City of Z, a film about ” his rather brilliant, rather lovely Victorian man who just became obsessed with this discovery he made in the Amazon jungle” in the 1920s. The melancholy Dane, Hamlet, is on the actor’s schedule for fall on the London stage.

And Sunny March, the production company he started with friends that just produced a short film that he appears in, Little Favour.

All of this comes on the heels of a remarkable year. Since May, he has appeared on the big screen in five major films, including an Oscar best-picture nominee,12 Years a Slave; an ensemble piece earning praise for its cast, August: Osage County; a lead role as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate; and two blockbuster sequels, Star Trek Into Darkness and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It can be difficult, even for a man of Cumberbatch’s quick intelligence, to remember every detail.

"Five films come out and they’re so different. From Khan (Trek) to Smaug to Julian Assange to Ford (Slave) to …,” he says, pausing. “You see, this is the problem. I actually then start forgetting what the other role was. (Another pause.) To Little Charles in August: Osage County. And that’s when it is literally an embarrassment of riches.”

He credits Sherlock, which premiered in 2010, with providing a big career boost, but says he was landing roles for 2011 productions — War Horse and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on film and Frankenstein at the Royal National Theater in England — at about the same time with major directors who hadn’t seen him play Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic sleuth.

Sherlock has “done a lot. I won’t say it’s changed my life, because I had a huge break at the same time as this role first came to fruition,” says Cumberbatch, substituting a sleek blue suit for Sherlock’s layered look on this warm winter day. “It was a sort of perfect storm of all mediums coming together at the same time, television, film and theater, even some radio.”

Cumberbatch has a rare star quality that makes viewers root for the often difficult Holmes, Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat says.

"I think he’s capable of being aloof and dangerous and (being able to) do, with complete honesty, every beat of unlikable behavior, and yet you still like him," he says. "The other thing you have to say is he’s one of the best actors alive. He’s absolutely supreme."

During an interview earlier in the day with a gathering of TV critics, Cumberbatch expresses appreciation for the accompanying fame, as exhibited by a group of fans outside the hotel who had waited for hours to see him. Asked an open-ended question about his reaction to the rise in public interest in the later interview, he responds, “Detached amusement,” and focuses on press criticism. Stories have focused on matters as varied as his comfortable upbringing to a photograph in which he held a sign directing paparazzi to cover more important events in Egypt.

"Sometimes, they go after you and they really try to make you hurt, and that’s when you’ve got to have a thick skin and just let it brush off you. I’ve spoken to people in more exalted positions than mine and they’re like, ‘Dude, it’s just Champagne problems," he says.

He talks expansively and thoughtfully about his career and fame, but draws the line on certain topics. He declines to answer a question about rumors he will reunite withTrek director J.J. Abrams for the next Star Wars film, which is scheduled to begin shooting in May, and he won’t elaborate on the “personal goals” he mentions for 2014. “They’re personal. Not for publication.”

The actor, who is single, also brushes off a question about whether he’s dating anyone in particular, but politely cushions his response. “I know you have to ask.”

He responds to questions with equanimity, although he thinks a query about whether he’s excited to play Hamlet, the central character in what is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest play is a bit obvious. (“Very excited. I don’t know what other answer there would be to that question,” he says, then feigns a lack of interest. “No, I’m really not that bothered.”)

His expresses displeasure only when an interviewer mentions that the late Turing received a royal pardon recently for 1950s criminal charges of gross indecency related to homosexuality. “The only person that should be pardoning anybody is him. Hopefully, the film will bring to the fore what an extraordinary human being he was and how appalling (his treatment was). It’s a really shameful, disgraceful part of our history,” he says of his Imitation Game character.

Although a fourth season of the contemporary drama has not been officially approved, Cumberbatch has verbally committed to it and says he sees room for character growth. “I’ll keep doing it as long as that’s the case, as long as I feel he’s developing and there’s stuff we’re all being challenged by and that it’s being loyal to the original stories as well.”

When the third season opens, Cumberbatch says Sherlock has regressed socially and emotionally after having been off neutralizing archnemesis Moriarty’s network of evildoers in the two years since his staged suicide at the end of Season 2. His return draws the ire of sidekick John Watson (Martin Freeman), who had thought his friend was dead. (The Season 3 opener drew 4 million viewers, up 25% from the second-season premiere, and Sunday’s second episode attracted 2.9 million viewers.)

Freeman “raised my game. That’s all important when you’re doing a piece that’s about a relationship as well as this particularly brilliant mind,” he says, before going off on a humorous detour. “He’s got good taste in clothes and music, which helps. He’s got good hygiene. That always helps. He can be quite grumpy, which doesn’t always help. I can be quite grumpy, which always helps.”

Sherlock evolves this season, Cumberbatch says, serving as best man at John’s wedding to Mary (Amanda Abbington) in last week’s episode and facing off Sunday against malicious, data-hoarding publisher Charles Augustus Magnussen. “He’s this media mogul who wields his leverage by using information — as people do, as newspapers do, as all media does — to control a message, to control a perception of the world.”

The series explores the effects of childhood on the adult Sherlock, partly through his competition with his brother Mycroft (Mark Gatiss).

"He wasn’t born to be an antisocial, difficult boy," he says. "I think he’s trying to keep up with Mycroft’s intelligence and it skewed the normal trajectory of childhood play and friendships in order to try and perfect this brain, this ability to retain information."

Cumberbatch says he wanted a Sherlock backstory so he could understand and convey how this man came to be.

"It will just be hollow gestures and running around speaking very fast — which, while some of our harshest critics have said that’s what I do, I beg to differ, especially after … this season. They can see there’s some acting going on, some craft going on. That’s important to me," says Cumberbatch, veering off before returning to his main point. "You can’t just be brilliant in a vacuum. … It would be like, ‘Wow! This guy is really on it,’ but then you’d want to know something about him."

With so many film, TV and stage roles done in such a short time, Cumberbatch has had to do more than just speak quickly.

"I found it difficult to get the sort of hyperarticulacy of Sherlock back having played Assange, and I found it sort of weirdly difficult to let go of Sherlock before starting Alan Turing," he says. "I practice very hard to sort of cleanse myself of every role after I’ve done it."

For all the recent high-profile film roles, an earlier miniseries character, 1920s Englishman Christopher Tietjens of Parade’s End, inspires him the most.

"He’s just sort of unfathomably generous and patient and yet really quietly courageous. He doesn’t suffer hypocrisy or fools gladly. He doesn’t betray himself or his ideals for any quick fixes. He’s just a good human being," he says. "I”ve [color=#ffffff]got a very big affection for that man. If I can live a life half as good as his, I will know I have done alright."

Sunday 9th February Benedict Cumberbatch appeared at the UK’s first convention for fans of Sherlock run by Starfury Events. The event saw over 850 fans attend from all around the world – keen to meet Sherlock cast and crew members including Louise Brealey (Molly Hooper), Jonathan Aris (Anderson), Lars Mikkelsen (Magnussen), Arwel Wyn Jones (set designer) and floor runner Patrick Waggett.

On the Sunday Benedict did an interview with the organiser some of which featured questions submitted by fans. Here’s some highlights of what Benedict said:

On 12 Years a Slave

I am incredibly proud to be part of that film. I do think it’s an important piece of work not only as a historical document of a true story but as a truly brilliant piece of cinema from Steve McQueen and it was just wonderful to be a part of it to be honest.

Everything that Steve McQueen tackles as subject matter has profundity in it. It’s a historical drama but of course what it teaches us about humanity whether it’s as you say a good man doing nothing when he could have done something or whether its about sex addiction (Shame) or any kind of addiction or whether its about the IRA and what that political situation made that man do as a form of protest (Hunger) is sort of extraordinary so I knew that joining that body of work it was going to be a very serious very important film as all of his films are.

12Slavery as a subject matter is hugely important and universally still very much so whether it’s the garment industry, whether it’s bond slavery where people are born into slavery and have to work their entire lives paying off impossible debts and never have any means of their own or whether it’s the sex industry and sex trafficking and countless other methods that aren’t as visible, aren’t as transparent, aren’t as colluded in as slavery was in that time.

Now that leads me into discussing Ford. It’s very easy in the 21st century to view him as a very bad man. He’s a conflicted man in the sense that he understands what he’s doing is wrong and yet he doesn’t act on that understanding. From our perspective that’s completely wrong but for his time that was the normal way of going about things. I can’t be free of judging that. I think it is wrong to not do anything when you definitely have a conscience that it is the wrong thing to be doing. He’s a man of religion. His Christianity teaches him that all men are equal in the eyes of God and yet he has human beings that he treats as and buys as cattle and also as a way of solving his debt. He’s a bad business man and when push comes to shove it’s about money so he sells Solomon in order to solve his debt and he sells him into the worst hands possible in the shape of Michael Fassbender’s character so is he a bad man?

Well there’s no such thing as a good slave owner but he certainly isn’t a good man. He’s flawed and I don’t think that’s just a 21st century sensibility but it’s a complex thing. Within the book, which I think it’s important to remember was edited by a white man and theres a foreword at the beginning of the book which says “Forgive Solomon’s ill phrasing” and it’s almost intellectual racism. It sets up Solomon’s story as something that’s going to be inferior to a white man’s version and I was really conscious of that when I first read it. It was the first thing that leapt of the page before this extraordinary, incredible true story from the man in his own words and yeah I just found it really really palpable that within that there was a very strong bond between Ford and Solomon. He talks about it and I’m paraphrasing something extraordinary like “Were it not for the fact of the separation from my family I would gladly work for Mr Ford all my life so good a Christian man is he.”

I’m not saying that’s the editors impression I believe that there was an understanding but the minute that understanding got broke was when push came to shove. He knows that what he’s got it’s worth more than a slave. He knows that by selling this man he’s going to solve his debt. He knows that he’s selling a free man that has been illegally obtained in the North and brought back to the South. Yeah not a good man on any front. Not in any way. Conflicted? Yes. Does he feel the pain of that? I leave it to the audience to judge these things but I certainly don’t feel any sympathy towards him. Your sympathies belong with Solomon as they should do.

I think what Michael (Fassbender) does extraordinarily well is to bring what is essentially a barbaric, violent, unfeeling human being into a three dimensional capacity where you understand that there is a process and he’s not just a brute and when he is he’s just so conflicted. He’s a stupid man. He’s in love with the thing that he’s supposed to hate and that’s his conflict. That’s his understanding and why he acts out in such a barbaric way and the torturous relationship with his wife which provokes that as well. They’re all complex characters.

Chiwetel (Ejiofor) and I were friends before and it was such a joy to work with him. I obviously only saw him for my part of the film which is small. I was on that part of his journey and saw that it was going to be one of the most truly remarkable performances of this year – of I think this decade. It has such subtlety, it has such grace and every inch of him is involved in every aspect of that character’s story and just to go on that experience with him as an audience was phenomenal. To work opposite him was really inspiring but at the end of the film you see a man with such grace and hope being treated with such total brutality, inhuman, unfeeling and disgusting barbaric ways that you get that close to seeing a man break.

There’s an extraordinary shot where his eyes just kind of glaze over and it’s after he’s trying to escape and he’s seen the lynching in the woods and his eyes just pass over the camera and it’s a moment of conclusion for the audience- you feel that he’s looking at you. It’s a man that has no hope and it’s right for everyone that they’re looking at him and I think they shot that in a carpark at some ridiculous hour right at the very end when they realised they wanted that moment and it’s a very deliberate beat in the film. He contains such a profound soul that man Chiwetel. He’s a perfect conduit for Solomon’s story and I just think he did such a wonderful job.

When you first started working on Sherlock did you know it was going to hit like this or was it a surprise when it took off in the way that it did?

I never quite knew I’d end up getting to a convention like this but I knew we’d be in danger of it because he’s a very iconic character and I knew we’d have some success but the true level of success that we’ve had around the world is beyond anything that we’d ever expected and it’s sort of extraordinary and we’re very grateful.

On how he got the role of Sherlock and whether he and Martin Freeman auditioned together.

I’ve got the feeling that everyone in this room knows the answer to these questions. We auditioned a lot of people. Martin walked in the room and he instantly upped my game and I turned to Steven and I said thats’ it I think we’ve found our Watson. I was the only one that was considered for Holmes and I went to read for them and it worked out nicely and I made them laugh a bit and then we started looking for our Watson. And yeah it’s absolutely critical that relationship between them as it is in the books. Every ounce of joy is a man observing his extraordinary friend. That’s what we’re reading a first person account of this overworldly creature. This incredible but difficult and wise and brilliant and extraordinary anti-hero in the shape of Holmes so yeah that relationship was always going to be central to it.

HarrisonOn Star Trek Into Darkness and playing Khan

It’s weird because so much of it was subterfuge having to keep quiet and not telling anybody who I was playing. I tried to distance myself from the mythology of it a little bit, like Sherlock a little bit, like other iconic characters I’ve played to try and find some personal truth in it and build something that was separate from what’s come before as not only is it a legendary character but from a legendary performance. I really relished it though. They gave me a complex enough and interesting enough character arch to draw something out that was very… well super human I guess. Everyone said – he’s so cold he’s such a machine. Well not really. He has super emotions as well. He’s super angry, he gets super upset he can’t get super happy but maybe that might be reserved for the musical version – Khan the musical! But it was an absolute joy playing him because even though it was from a stable of iconic characters of that franchise we felt we were building something new from the ground up with utter reverence for what went before but also we can be different. We Khan be different. It was a weird thing. Because I was in such tight, secret collusion with the creatives on that but a lot of the heavy lifting was done by them as well. Because it was all so secret it sort of helped in the creative process as well as to build up something of our own.

What’s the acting process behind playing a biographical or iconic character?

Playing someone who’s real comes with a very peculiar challenge especially if they’re still alive and their story is still current and there’s a sort of very complex morality involved there and that was the hardest part of playing a lot of the characters in The Fifth Estate. In terms of other characters because of what people expect of you as them whether its Stephen Hawking or even Van Gogh.Oh I’m forgetting all the others now but I’m sure they can tell you. It’s a very different charge, it’s a very different responsibility, it’s a very different joy as well, but I suppose there is a parallel in the sense that people think they know characters whether they are iconic fictional characters or whether they are real people with a fame or an iconic status. And so yeah you have to tread a little more carefully but it’s all about trying to do something that’s three dimensional, that has some sort of dynamic and universality which connects with everyone however extraordinary they are, that they are flesh and blood. That they experience the lives that we experience and it is that EM Forster thing of “Only Connect.” And I think that as much as I get a kick and in a way it’s a vainglorious kick out of trying to assemble and become something other than myself it’s really important to bring yourself into your work and to therefore relate it to what it is about you that is the same as your character. And therefore for an audience to read what is similar to them and you can’t just work in isolation from what we are all part of as the human experience which is a very waffly way of saying “yeah it’s quite hard.”

The process when it’s somebody who has a lot of history for want of a better word is difficult. Already you’re coming to the work when it’s been edited into this form. Which is a script which is a 2 & a half hour at most story of this life or part of a life and noone really deserves that much reduction. So its all about how you can shape that or bring some life or flesh to the bone which means it’s honouring the complexities of their life at the same time as storytelling. So it’s a real balance between the art of making a cinematic narrative and trying to honour the actual life of that person and it is complex and god knows whatever we’re doing it’s imperfectable and particularly thats the case when you’re playing real people. Only they can be themselves it’s that simple.

Its a very different challenge from creating a character from the ground up but then with that as well I do think its about routing stuff in the same kind of integrity, trying to give three dimensionality and at the same time something that’s relatable to the characters. So obviously lots of research when it comes to people whose truth you are trying to honour. Lots of sometimes simulacrum work in terms of voice, hair, make up, whatever that might be to try and change into that person, that shape, that voice, that look, that colouring, that hair whatever it may be.

I like the other side of work I like the Jimmy Stewart…someone paid me a huge compliment today and likened me to Jimmy Stewart which I thought was lovely and very far from what I usually get described as. As a character actor Jimmy was a version of himself in many ways as Carey Grant was and I think that is equally as profound a skill. I had the fortune to work with George Clooney last year and I think what he does is extraordinary as he’s managed to be…no he does change he’s a character actor but in some roles where he is a version of himself whether its Michael Clayton or Syriana or Oh Brother Where Art Thou? or Gravity he is very recognisable as being himself and yet at the same time different people every time and I think that’s as profound an art as it is to put on the putty nose and the sort of world of Olivier acting or the well known method actors like Hardy (Tom) or Daniel Day Lewis and Christian Bale. And you have to preserve something of yourself in order to have a connection as well and sometimes work can leave you bowled over with its brilliance but you can feel a disconnect from the characters because you’re marvelling at the acting rather than feeling the story so it’s always a difficult balance that and that’s very much the case for both modes of approaching a role and working both types of character whether they’re real or fictional.

Whats your favourite medium – tv, theatre, film?

Tell him the answer. Which is my favourite medium? (Audience shouts “All of them”) I’m rubbish at favourites. I’m rubbish at favourite books, colours, clothes, journeys, friends. I introduce a lot of people, well a few, well more than one person as my best friend so I don’t do that. I don’t do that. I feel that genuinely they feed off one another, well not my best friends but the mediums that I work in. I couldn’t do one without the other. I love radio, I love voice work, I love narration, I love animation, I love film work, television or theatre so I can’t really distinguish between them. They all manifest in one shape or another.

And more recently you’ve done motion capture?

That was a lot of fun. Because you’re free. You’re in a room not as palatial as this but you’ve got carpet and walls. It’s not a set, it’s not a location, you’re not in costume, you’re not even working with other actors, you’re completely and utterly selfishly free to do whatever the hell you want and you’re a kid in a bedroom imagining an entire world again and so that was brilliant. I hadn’t done that for a long long time and what an extraordinary character to try and pull off so I had an absolute blast doing that. It was really good fun.

On Frankenstein

I really genuinely enjoyed playing both roles. I think Jonny found the doctor harder but he enjoyed both as well but I found both roles really enjoyable but obviously for both of us the challenge of playing the Creature was something else, as was swapping the roles.

Have you and Jonny Lee Miller compared notes on playing Sherlock?

No! No. I mean Robert and I talked about it. I met up with Robert Downey Jr in LA purely by chance (the photos were all over the place). Were they? I was half expecting Jonny to go “Woo” (mimes an epic photobomb) but he was probably in New York making Elementary. I haven’t compared notes with Jonny. He was so respectful of the fact… I mean he talked a lot to me about “Should I do this maybe? What do you feel about it?” He wanted to know what my feelings were. We had a long conversation about it but that was more about two actors doing the same character rather than how to do the same character and as with us on stage he saw very different things in both parts which is why I think both evenings worked in Frankenstein. We weren’t copying one another. We were inspired by one another but we weren’t copying one another and I think the same goes with this and also I think as I’ve said before there are three of us in the modern day playing this role and we’re in the high 70’s of what came before us and so it’s the most adapted fictional character of all time so you can’t be possessive about it. You just have to be generous and with the success that we’ve had with our version what have I got to worry about? I’m loving it.

(Mod asks audience members where they’ve flown from to the convention which includes France, Germany, Japan and Shanghai to name a few)

SherlockNewIt’s amazing. I think without being mock humble, I think it’s the most extraordinary character, it’s the most extraordinary body of work that has already been a global phenomenon for years now. All the heavy lifting was done by Conan Doyle in the original novels and we’re just embellishing it with our imaginations. Thank god the brilliant imagination of Moffat and Gatiss and Thompson as well. But it still blows us away. The viewing figures we got in China, the requests we got to our Prime Minister to make more Sherlock “Trade deals, human rights? No lets just have more episodes of Sherlock.” It’s just translated around the world and it’s interesting now because I meet up with friends all over the place around the globe and they say “it must be nice not being recognised” and literally within the same breath and two people have said this to me and someone’s gone “Oh my god its Sherlock”. Its phenomenal and I do think it did grow exponentially. It was word of mouth. We love PBS, we love Masterpiece but it’s not a “huge billboard everywhere in America” kind of platform for it. It doesn’t get as much advertising or presence but it grew and grew and grew because of its following from fans on the internet in America first and then who got it on the television and then within the industry and then word of mouth and then it became the cult thing that it is I guess but it’s extraordinary. It’s very rare. There are other things which are culty but it’s quite rare for it to keep growing as it has done and it’s really exciting.

How much did you feel that come the third series the city of London had almost become a character?

I think it always has been. I think very much more that it became a sort of corporal entity with veins and the kind of flow of vice through it, through the underground network like a kind of capillary network like a lung or a tree it became more organic and more part of the show. It became its body. We went underground with it and we’ve been high and on buildings and falling off buildings and out on the streets and shooting at night a lot. The night belongs to Sherlock as well. That’s the other thing. I really do get that sense when I’m running around in a taxi or on my motorbike or getting on the tube at night. It’s a very nocturnal city in our show and with this character so it’s great. It’s been my home for all my life and it always will be so the fact that it’s at the core of a drama that was set in Victorian London and every bit of fog, every Hansom cab, every Bobby, every bit of spooky silhouette in a gaslight, every iconic location as well as dump or garage or hideaway or horrible dank sweaty cellar and the sort of underbelly of it as well as the iconic and I think we have reinvigorated that in a modern sense and I think it works. It just works because it’s still that marriage the city, the city scape itself is that perfect marriage between old and new. That’s what’s so extraordinary about it. You’re surrounded by thousands of years worth of history as well as something that was shoved up in no time last week. Like the Shard. No I’m joking.

Do you stick with Moffat and Gatiss’ text or do you go back to the Arthur Conan Doyle books?

The books. I always begin with the books. Always. They are like many of the adaptations that I’ve done and been blessed to be serviced by, the most blindingly brilliant authors. And especially in the case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as it’s a first person narrative and it’s my character under observation from the point of view of a doctor and you couldn’t ask for a better companion to lead you through the various eccentricities and witnesses and wonderfulness of Holmes. So I’m always picking up things I hadn’t seen on a first read. I’m always trying to incorporate new things and I’ve got a long way to go and I’ve got a lot more to bring of what Doyle has written and this character and at the same time you know Mark and Steven are the ultimate fanboys so there isn’t really any stone that they haven’t turned over and plumbed for its riches and very successfully I think.

But even within that even within our world there are other elements such as us improvising or having another beer or suggesting a certain type of deduction or changing a certain moment in a scene or it can be really simple stuff or it can be putting out fires. You can ride on set and it’s all about detecting someone’s left handed and you look around and everything’s set out for the right handed and you think well surely if I was left handed I would have left my mug there on the side by the sofa, surely that’s where the table should be and whether the switches on the left or the right would be left on… And it’s just little things like that you know as well as making things up like “Blud.” That was mine. And I can’t remember what else, I can’t remember Oh yes “Sorry about my…thing” when I was drunk. We improvised a lot in those drunk scenes and it was great fun. It was really good fun.

Have you or Martin ever requested any stories be adapted?

The Great Sausage Dog Story. No no no. We’ve talked about the trajectory. We’ve talked about how we want the characters to grow within our world but no. No we don’t really mess with that but I think Mark and Steven have a long game so it’s up to them.

Will we be seeing many more seasons of the show?

Nah. That’s it. You’ve had your lot sorry. (He was definitely joking)

Do you ever look back at the first series and think how you’d like to have done it differently?

I haven’t watched the first series since it was on telly actually. No I haven’t seen it since I cant remember maybe before I did a Q&A at an event 0r something. I really haven’t seen it for a long long time. Two I watched bits of again before we started doing three. I am always conscious that things should evolve and I think that’s really important if there is a next season. It’s something I’m wary of, sort of scientifically, forensically looking at what you’ve done before. I do it a little bit. It’s weird this season was much easier to get back into and I felt much more comfortable. Hopefully not too comfortable. The second season was odd. We were sort of looking at each other across this table in…(looks to Arwel for confirmation as to where they were filming) Cowbridge. We were filming in Cowbridge and it was a year maybe a year and a half later and I was looking across at Martin and going “oh yeah you were rather good in that thing I watched last summer. That thing I’m in! Fuck what am I doing?” and obviously I didn’t really know what our place was and it was very strange. It felt odd. It felt like the muscle memory wasn’t there but this time it did weirdly enough. It was very familiar and it was a good place to start as it felt we could push it a little bit further again. It was fun.

Has playing Sherlock with his memory palace affected your own memory?

Er….what was the question? Joke. When I’m doing it yes when I’m not doing it no. I mean I’m constantly having to memorise things although not quite at the same volume and pace as I do with Sherlock so yeah it’s a little bit like doing a cross word or watching a really good bit of film or television or any sort of art you just feel a bit of a stretch and that’s great and you feel that your capacity to do that improves. It’s like any kind of practice. You get your game on basically. It’s fun. It doesn’t always work. There are night shoots sometimes where I haven’t had any sleep and I have to do a massive deduction and my brain just flatlines which is very unpleasant for all around. But it does get slightly easier. I did have to take myself off and put myself in a quiet corner and I don’t mean I was sort of rocking quietly but I really had to pull myself away from everybody else when we were doing the wedding stuff because that was really hard. And we did that over 5 days that whole thing where they cut to and from I was doing the whole thing as a monologue in front of everyone. So I was running around on the border of madness at one point as I’m having an imaginary conversation with Mycroft in my head, I’m trying to deduce which of the women it could be and what the connection is with those women and I’m smashing myself around the face which doesn’t really help anyone’s memory and then trying to play to all the elements of the room as well as taking in the technical requirements of the shot and everything else. So that was a real marathon and that was an especially hard, removed piece of work from everything else that is hard work on that show. But I loved it. I really did relish it and I was so well supported. It was a great group of extras, the supporting artists and regulars as well as the newcomers who were in the wedding episode. It was a lovely thing and by the end of the week I had a lovely drink with all of them. But I really really did feel very supported.

But it’s a good question. I definitely do benefit from it I think anyone would and it’s like any memory exercise. I don’t have a mind palace but I have an associative memory. I have things that are used to just tie in like mnemonics or any sort of association. Sometimes that grows on the day obviously with the physicality of where I am, what I’m doing and why I’m doing what I’m doing makes it much clearer when you’re actually fleshing out the body of a scene so that helps. The hardest thing about television is learning stuff cold. You don’t have the context until you’re on set with the other actors and doing stuff for the camera and the set up so that’s what’s really hard about it I think. It’s not like a play where you run it in within a very specific context and that’s always fluid, it changes but there are certain parameters that can’t because there are lighting cues, there are entrances and exits, there are stage movements and you rehearse the hell out of that. So your association, your understanding of it is very tied in with all sorts of other things that become almost..you don’t really realise they’re going in they’re subliminal. I’m standing here looking at the left hand corner and that means I’m about to say “God damn you go to hell” and I turn around here and that means “Oh hi how are you I didn’t see you coming” and with television you have to fix that on the day. So mind palace? Yes to a degree. You do need something as an intellectual process to harness and hook things in but I just read it again and again. I write it out again and again and I try to print it on different coloured scripts. White and black is not particularly good for memory apparently as it’s too polarizing for the eye and mind. Wish I’d known that for the first two series. And what other tricks have I tried? Yeah just associations with words and I can’t remember what other tricks I’ve tried…

Do you think Sherlock is at his most dangerous when he’s at his most vulnerable?

Very good question. I think yeah like any of us I completely agree that he is. He’s beaten at the end of three, Magnussen has trumped him that’s why he has to resort to violence. That’s a weakness. That’s not a skill. It’s the bullied becoming a bully it’s the ultimate. Removing all threat with death is brutal. It’s nothing else it’s brutal. So yes I would agree absolutely that’s a good point. He’s at his most dangerous when he’s vulnerable and that can be to do with his addictions or predelictions or any kind of obsession that he has.

Mod tries to bring the talk to a close & Benedict insists on a rapid fire question round.

Whats been your best and your worst audition?

Worst Trevor Nunn – called him Adrian Noble and left. Best probably Danny Boyle. I nearly passed out and came to and they were going (mimes shock)

How did your approach to playing Sherlock change after Martin was cast?

I got better. Next.

Was it difficult to bring a personal stamp to a character like Sherlock that has been played so many times before?

It’s vital and therefore difficult but absolutely necessary.

Do you believe that the never work with animals adage is true….?

No love it. I love horses. I like children too. That boy that was in episode three was adorable (I think he means The Sign of Three unless he was referring to Louis Moffat)

Who was your inspiration as an actor when you were growing up?

Oh god many many many. The whole of Equity. My father in particular and my mother. Many, many actors. Stephen Dillane, Mark Rylance, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Gambon, Jonny Lee Miller and I’m not just saying that he was in a play called Four Nights in Knaresborough which was rather amazing. Ken Stott. I’m still growing up. Everyone of them.

What was it like working with your parents?

Amazing, wonderful, I want to do it again.

What would you say characterises an effective screen adaptation of a literary text?

Effective literary adaptation is something that manages to condense the beauty of the novel…(Benedict then started speaking at the speed of sound to the roaring approval of the crowd) and the ability of the actors to dig and research and have the ability to show thought processes and subtext and not say what they’re feeling and not do what they’re feeling but actually do something else and tell the audience that they’re feeling something else – Sir Tom Stoppard Parades End.

Why was Anderson in his mind palace?

It’s just a figurative representation. I don’t think it says much about his respect for the man. It’s just part of what he does. Its associative memory. As is the fear. As is Moriarty. It’s the fear. It’s not that Moriarty constantly plays in his head. Or is it?

Do the characters you play change you?

hallcumberbatchGood and bad things happen. I get impatient when I play Sherlock as my mother constantly points out to me. I fell in love with Christopher Tietjens. I’d like to be a better man because of him. I am constantly inspired by characters and I am also changed physically. I loved working out and being big for Khan. Oh crumpets where was I? Yeah you learn a lot you learn a hell of a lot. Van Gogh, Joseph Hooker, Stephen Hawking, Sherlock Holmes, pretty smart, pretty extraordinary, talented and very sort of extreme human beings and characters so yeah you do, you learn a hell of a lot. It’s one of the best things about being an actor this idea that it’s further education it is an excuse for continued learning. And we only scratch the surface. It’s only a representation of the depth of these characters or people’s brilliance. I mean I can’t play the piano very well, I cannot play the violin at all, I can’t computer programme, I can’t paint like Van Gogh can paint, I can’t conceive of the cosmos in my head in the way Stephen Hawking can but attempting to and trying to get close to it and honour something of their talent is a real gift every time I get the opportunity to play these extraordinary people.

Have you started preparing for Hamlet and what other dream theatre roles would you like to play?

I started preparing for Hamlet when I was 17. Probably before that. When I was 17 I was asked at school to play him and I went no. I’m not ready and I want to get A Levels and I didn’t want to get obsessed and let it take over my life as I have been with Lindsey (Turner – who is directing Hamlet) over the past three months talking, talking, talking and it’s very deep routed. What was the other question?

Dream theatre roles?

John Proctor (The Crucible). I’d like to play him. Richard III. That’s enough for you to be going on with. Hamlet’s the main one in my sights at the moment. Oh as well as my character in Blood Mountain, as well as my character in The Lost City of Z and something else that might come between that and Hamlet which I can’t talk about now… It’s not Star Wars no.

Oh god many many many. The whole of Equity. My father in particular and my mother. Many, many actors. Stephen Dillane, Mark Rylance, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Gambon, Jonny Lee Miller and I’m not just saying that he was in a play called Four Nights in Knaresborough which was rather amazing. Ken Stott. I’m still growing up. Everyone of them.

"Now that leads me into discussing Ford. It’s very easy in the 21st century to view him as a very bad man. He’s a conflicted man in the sense that he understands what he’s doing is wrong and yet he doesn’t act on that understanding. From our perspective that’s completely wrong but for his time that was the normal way of going about things. I can’t be free of judging that. I think it is wrong to not do anything when you definitely have a conscience that it is the wrong thing to be doing. He’s a man of religion. His Christianity teaches him that all men are equal in the eyes of God and yet he has human beings that he treats as and buys as cattle and also as a way of solving his debt. He’s a bad business man and when push comes to shove it’s about money so he sells Solomon in order to solve his debt and he sells him into the worst hands possible in the shape of Michael Fassbender’s character so is he a bad man?"

Being Benedict CumberbatchThe Sherlock star goes deep with Standard CultureFEB 18 2014Last Thursday, English actor Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, August: Osage County, Star Trek Into Darkness, 12 Years a Slave, War Horse, The Hobbit, et al.) kicked off our new In Conversation series with BAFTA at The Standard, High Line. Before the event, we had the opportunity to sit down with him to talk about the perils of fame, why Brits make better actors, and those devoted Cumberbitches …

You’re kicking off our In Conversation series with BAFTA. Happy to be here?

I am. It’s genuinely a really big thrill. BAFTA is such a great non-profit organization that does so much to help promote the arts and the British role in them. What bigger honor than to be the first one to be asked to do this series in Manhattan? It’s very cool.

British actors are having quite a run in the States. Why do you think that is?

I think the Americans are extraordinary as well, of course, but I think what we’ve got at the moment—which we’ve always had, but now is more useful—is that fact that when we train in England we have the opportunity to do radio, television, film and theater all in one place. In America, actors have to make a really difficult choice. If you’re fresh out of Julliard, you’ve gotta ask yourself, ‘Am I gonna do the classics off Broadway? Am I gonna go ply my wares for TV pilots? Am I gonna try to do films?’ There are so many ways up the slippery pole.

I think we’re also grounded in the classics but at the same time completely in touch with pop culture and social media. We can fly in the face of convention as quickly as the States can.

Was there a point in your career where you packed your bags and headed for Hollywood?

Not at all, no. James McEvoy actually was my main inspiration. I could see him doing everything brilliantly, and the work was coming to him. He was in the States if he needed to be for work, but he wasn’t gonna come over and kick his toes around in a pool waiting on some pilot script. I think once you do that, you kind of want to stay here, and I’ve never wanted to stay here. I’ve always wanted to be free enough to just travel to where the work is, because my base of family and friends are in London.

I had heard your name six months before I even knew what you looked like. Do you have the best PR team in the world or are Sherlock fans really that rabid?

You know, a lot of people who don’t like me say, Oh, he’s got really good PR and he should shut up, but actually it’s all down to this wonderful sort of exponential growth of cultish adoration for Sherlock, which is global now. That’s why you really got to know my name, I guess. But also a series of things happened at the same time as that series first aired. I got cast in War Horse, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, and Frankenstein, so it was just a sort of bumper crop in all sorts of mediums. So that’s why. To be honest, my PR team are there to stop me from being overexposed. You’re contracted to promote the work you’ve done, and have conversations like this, and normally it’s kind of abhorrent. You don’t want to do it. You want the work to speak for itself. But people need to understand the messenger as well as admire or enjoy the message, so there’s this constant examination of the personal.

Does it bore you?

I bore myself! I bore myself listening to myself. You get stuck in a bubble talking, especially when you’re promoting a film in an airless hotel room, unlike this one, I should add. It’s horrendously repetitive. But these are high-class problems. It’s hardly hard work. It’s just rather nullifying and not particularly elevating or creative. You’re sort of talking in a loop.

How much of your time is devoted to promotion?

Despite what my critics might say, my publicity team are brilliant about stopping me from doing things that I don’t need to do, and just pointing out what’s good to do, what I have to contractually do, and what I really don’t need to do. So it’s getting less, hopefully. I don’t engage in social media because of that …

You don’t? You have quite a devoted following. The Cumberbitches, I think they’re called.

Nope, not at all. Not at all. I get on with my work and my fans are very respectful of that, weirdly. I think they’d love it if I started Tweeting, but as I’ve said before, the people who are good at it are great at it. It’s like a new art form. It’s phenomenal how much it’s opened channels of communication. I like those channels of communication for my work, but I don’t want to journalize my life and publicize it because I really value my privacy and also my time. It would take me forever! I’d worry about it and fret over it. Unless you’re as instantly brilliant as Stephen Fry is—unless you have that kind of immediate capacity to condense a moment into a pithy phrase—why bother? He’s Wildean in his epigrammatic ability to do that. I’m full of admiration for it.

Have you ever logged on to Twitter?

I joined once under a pseudonym when the London riots were happening ‘cause I thought I wanted to get some kind of idea of what was happening on the street. It was rubbish, actually, by the end. They were saying the Electric Ballroom was burning and all these people were writing fierce comments back saying, No, no, no, that happened two years ago! If I did Tweet, I think I’d probably become dangerously obsessed by it and never pick up a book again and never really be able to do my homework and stretch myself as an actor. So I’m kind of protecting myself. It’s not because I feel it’s wrong.

How do you spend your downtime?

I just increasingly enjoy the quiet moments when I can be on my own with my friends and family, or with a book, having a live experience. That’s really what I crave, and I always have done. It’s very weird for my friends now, and they’ve realized that unless they get me in their kitchen, or in mine, or a hotel room somewhere private like this, the amount of demands on my attention—very polite, usually; very polite and considered—are just too much. They know they can’t get any access to me until we’re alone.

That doesn’t sound very fun.

It’s strange, and my friends see it. They get it very quickly. After all, they’re my friends, so they’re very empathetic.

“I was an art scholar back at school, but I wouldn’t call myself David Hockney or anything.” During the interview, Benedict drew us a picture on our iPad.

It’s all pretty good stuff though, no?

It really is, actually. People aren’t throwing insults at me. You get the occasional one, but the majority of people just want to touch base and say that they saw your movie. I have to say, I’m so sorry, which one?

You’re 37 now. Do you think that’s helped you cope with fame?

I think it’s got to have helped, but you still experience learning curves that nothing prepares you for. I’m still walking into a lot of my experiences as an innocent. I guess you have a slightly more secure and comfortable sense of who you are, so you’re able to deal with that with a little bit more maturity. It’s difficult, though. I’ve had to wean myself into a position where I can say “no” to things. I’m usually quite acquiescent in a kind of cooperative way, but then it costs me, and I get resentful. People will say, “But you said you wanted to do it!” I’ve got to stop saying “yes” to everything. I’ve gotten better at that. A little bit.